Adventures in Interior Design: Georgian Manor with a 27-Firm Redesign Reduced to $8.9M

Monday, February 17, 2014, by Spencer Peterson

If San Francisco's Herbst Manor looks like one of the most eccentrically designed homes on the market, that's because it very well might be, with interiors done by 27 different design firms. A Teepee-equipped living room, a bathroom with an overgrown biowall, a bedroom ceiling covered with a black-and-white map of downtown SF; all were installed by the 2013 San Francisco Decorator Showcase, which left few traces of the overabundance of mirrors and gold trim that gave the 115-year-old Ernest Coxhead-designed Georgian mansion the nickname 'Mini Versailles.' Formerly the home of the late San Francisco society dame Lee Herbst Gruhn, the five-bedroom, 8,120-square-foot Pacific Heights abode was listed for $12.5M in October of 2011, after which a roller coaster ride of price changes saw it dropped to $9.75M, bounced back to $11.9M after the many-sided refurbishment, and finally brought down to $8.9M after a buyer failed to emerge. You might say the place is going through a bit of an identity crisis, after searching for a new look and coming back with a still unsought-after smattering of them. As with any renewal, old issues were traded in for a host of new ones, but at least in this case, 'boring' isn't one of them.

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Adventures in Interior Design: Georgian Manor with a 27-Firm Redesign Reduced to $8.9M