San Francisco is a city with a long and unique history. With this history comes a wide variety of interesting and sometimes stunningly beautiful buildings. Wandering the streets of San Francisco, and noticing these buildings, one frequently wants to learn more about them. And that is why I bought this book.

However, I was disappointed by the fact that most of the houses featured in this volume only have the year it was built, who built it, and a very brief description. Often there is only one sentence saying this house was built in Queen Anne style and that it has a tower (self-evident from the picture, or once you actually see the building). The book says very little about the history of each house, why it was built like it was, notable persons that lived there, etc. It also does very little to put the houses in the context of the surrounding neighborhood.

The book features "tours" that you can take to view the described houses, but it doesn't quite pull it off, and the end result is a strange mix of tourist guide and architectural reference that performs mediocre at both.

San Francisco desperately needs a good book to picture, describe and catalog its unique architecture, but alas, this book is not it. It would have been better if the author concentrated the book on San Francisco houses only, instead of the entire Bay Area, and offered fewer houses with a better description of each. Still, it is the best I have been able to find, and it is better than nothing, hence the three stars.

You can look-up just about any noteworthy San Francisco building in this guide to the best. My own choice is the historic Monadnock Building at 685 Market Street. It was being constructed in 1906, but before its west wall was even completed the Great Earthquake and Fire struck. Somehow the building managed to survive not only those calamities but two separate attempts by the army to destroy it with dynamite (hoping to create a firebreak that was intended to save the original Palace Hotel). After the Monadnock was completed in 1907 it was casually referred to as "the railroad building," because it housed so many offices in that business. By 1985 it was thoroughly renovated, however, and the tenants inhabiting it became almost exclusively those involved in either art or law pursuits. As the book recommends, be sure to ask the guard in the lobby for the free leaflet by Hamilton Barrett, the building's own historian. When we went for our copy the guard even contributed a few additional details about one of the ghosts known to frequent the first floor at night. A "Lady in White," she wears a long turn of the century style dress and likes to silently float toward the guard's desk from the west hallway. She then touches anyone who would dare sleep.