Alfred E. Clarke Mansion
Historic building in San Francisco, California, United States
The Alfred E. Clarke Mansion, also known as the Caselli Mansion, Nobby Clarke's Castle and Nobby Clarke's Folly, is a mansion at 250 Douglass Street on the corner of Caselli Avenue in Eureka Valley, San Francisco, California. Built in 1891 by Alfred "Nobby" Clarke, it has been a hospital and is now an apartment building. It became a San Francisco Designated Landmark in 1975.
Description
The house is a four-story structure in Baroque-Queen Anne style; it has several towers and the roof has bands of scalloped shingles alternating with plain. It stands on a site at the head of Eureka Valley and originally had 45 rooms; The interior features an impressive foyer with grand staircase, carved fireplaces, mantels, and wood paneling, and fine stained glass. Alfred "Nobby" Clarke, who had it built, is said to have based it on a French lakeside chateau whose plans he bought.
History
Clarke, who came to San Francisco from Ireland as a cabin boy in 1850, had amassed a fortune of some $200,000 by dubious means while working for the police department from 1856 to 1887, for much of that time as clerk to the chief of police and later as the department's legal advisor. He bought the lot in 1890 and completed the house in 1892 for a reputed $100,000. Clarke engaged in an expensive legal feud with a neighbor over water sales, and soon after completing the house lost his fortune in a nationwide economic depression; in 1892 he declared himself insolvent after signing his real estate holdings over to his wife and a friend in an attempt to conceal them. He then brought a series of unsuccessful lawsuits against the city and his creditors and was repeatedly jailed before dying at age 69.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Alfred E. Clarke Mansion” as historic building in San Francisco, California, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as historic building in San Francisco, California, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4722577. Authority coordinates are 37.760, -122.440. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1891, 1975, 1850 and 1856.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Alfred E. Clarke Mansion”, its source revision and the description used here.
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Alfred E. Clarke Mansion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.