What we've learned about Pacific Heights
A full-floor apartment near Lafayette Park is not simply a large flat. It is a formal sequence of rooms — entry hall, drawing room, dining room, butler’s pantry — laid out so that guests never crossed paths with staff, and the pantry corridor still runs behind all of it. Cleaning one properly means working that back spine first and finishing at the front, so nothing is carried through a room already done.
Buildings matter as much as apartments. Several of the 1920s co-ops facing the park keep a resident manager, a vendor list and a service elevator that runs on request, and a crew that turns up without being on the list simply waits. We take the building name and the manager’s preference when the account is set up. Along Fillmore Street the buildings are smaller and the routine is different: a shared stair, a mail alcove, and a key left where you say.
Pacific Heights homes, structurally
Stock divides cleanly. Elevator buildings from the 1910s and 1920s hold single-floor apartments of two to four thousand square feet, with herringbone parquet, plaster cornices, marble bathrooms and radiators that leave a fine grey dust on sills. The houses — mostly Edwardian and Queen Anne, some Georgian revival — run three and four floors over a garage, with a narrow back stair the crew uses. Ceilings are high in both, so light fittings and picture rails want a pole rather than a step stool.