A new development proposal would add eight apartments above the parking garage at the Tamalpais Apartments, the 11-story Russian Hill tower at 1201 Greenwich Street that once served as a backdrop for Humphrey Bogart and Joan Crawford on the silver screen. The plans call for three new stories of housing wrapped around the historic 1923 structure, leaving the original building untouched while adding 13,140 square feet of residential space.
The proposal, reported by San Francisco YIMBY, was drafted by Syncopated Architecture and includes eight new apartments: five three-bedroom units and three four-bedroom units. The addition would reduce the building's parking capacity slightly, from 26 spaces down to 25, while the new units are designed to wrap around the existing structure rather than alter it. According to the outlet, the city planning department has published the plans ahead of a project review meeting, a step that precedes any formal application.
A Building With Hollywood and Beat-Era History
The Tamalpais Apartments has a cinematic pedigree that long predates this proposal. Its fire escape and entrance appeared in pivotal scenes of the 1947 Bogart thriller Dark Passage and the 1952 Joan Crawford film Sudden Fear, according to Film Locations. Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac also wrote about the building in his novel “Visions of Cody,” describing his real-life observation of Crawford filming outside the tower during one of his evening walks through Russian Hill, in a vignette titled “Joan Rawshanks in the Fog,” as noted by DHARMA Beat.
The tower sits across from George Sterling Park and just one block from the Lombard Street switchbacks, per the YIMBY report, placing any future construction squarely within one of Russian Hill's most photographed corridors. The original tower was designed by architect Conrad A. Meussdorffer, who ran his own studio from 1897 through 1939 after studying under George Sanders. His other San Francisco works include the Empress Apartments at 1350 Sutter Street, the Arcona Apartments at 861 California, 2100 Jackson Street, and the Alta Plaza Apartments at 2500 Steiner Street — a body of work one city profile describes as probably the finest collection of apartment buildings in San Francisco by a single architect, according to the same YIMBY report.
Preservation Meets a Citywide Housing Push
Meussdorffer's buildings carry serious market cachet today. A unit at his 2006 Washington Street project in Pacific Heights listed for $35 million in March 2024, according to SFGATE, underscoring his reputation as a favorite architect among the city's early 20th-century elite. A 1923 building by Meussdorffer at 2100 Jackson Street is slated to return to the rental market; Emerald Fund owns the building, and OpenScope Studio is the architect.
Syncopated Architecture, the firm behind the Greenwich Street plans, is a woman-owned San Francisco firm founded in 2009, and its Clutch profile describes work on apartments, unit reconfiguration, and ADUs.
The 1201 Greenwich Street parcel sits in an RM-2 zoning district, classified as a Residential, Mixed Districts, Moderate Density District, according to Redfin property records.
Context in a Slow-Moving Housing Market
No estimated construction cost or timeline has been established for the Greenwich Street project, the YIMBY report notes. Still, the proposal arrives as San Francisco faces intense pressure to accelerate housing production.
The eight-unit proposal remains in early planning stages.
