Chambers Mansion

On his death in 1901 it went to his sister Ada Chambers Martin. By 1977 it was a rundown boardinghouse; Robert Pritikin bought it that year, opened the Mansion Hotel and, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, played up the ghost of a niece called Claudia as part of the hotel's entertainment. At his request the city designated the house Landmark No. 119 in 1980. Searches of census records and city directories by Chronicle writers in 2018 and 2020 found no Claudia Chambers; the woman who did suffer in the house was Robert's wife, Eudora, who disappeared for a week in 1893, survived a suicide attempt that year and died in 1897. The hotel closed in 2000 and the building was divided into two townhouses.

The house stands on the north side of the 2200 block of Sacramento Street, at number 2220, between Laguna and Buchanan in Pacific Heights. It was built in 1887 to designs by J. C. Mathews & Son for Robert Craig Chambers. The survey sheet prepared for the city's Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board by Patrick McGrew on 11 February 1980 gives its style as "Queen Anne w/ Gothic & Tuscan Ornament", calls it the "First House in the row to be built", and records that a west tower was added by the architect Houghton Sawyer in 1917, "at which time the building was moved 10 feet to the east". It describes Chambers as "a Utah industrialist who made his metropolitan residence in San Francisco". Chambers had been sheriff of Plumas County, California, from 1858 to 1862 and made his fortune as superintendent of the Ontario silver mine near Park City, Utah, which he eventually sold to George Hearst, according to Katie Dowd's reconstruction of the family's history in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2018. He and his wife Eudora had no children; at some point before her death they took in two of Eudora's nieces, Lillian and Harriet. In May 1893 Eudora, then 40, went missing from the house and was found a week later on the beach near Mussel Rock, "very weak and helpless". At the end of that year the San Francisco Call, under the headline "Mrs. R.C. Chambers Tries to Commit Suicide", reported that a train engineer near Valencia Street had seen her throw herself in front of his engine on New Year's Eve; she was thrown clear with injuries to her head and hip. She died in 1897, and Dowd found no record of the cause. Robert Chambers died of appendicitis on 11 April 1901, just short of seventy. His estate, valued at $1.5 million, went to his brothers and sisters, and the house to his sister Ada Chambers Martin, who lived in it with her husband until their deaths in the early 1910s; it then passed to another sister, Margaret. Lillian and Harriet sued the Chambers family, saying they had deeded a tract of land in Butte County to their uncle on the understanding that his will would provide for them. After several appeals they lost. By 1977 the mansion was, in the words of the Chronicle's library director Bill Van Niekerken, "a rundown boardinghouse". Robert Pritikin bought it that year and opened the Mansion Hotel, which Van Niekerken gives as 16 rooms and Dowd as 15. In January 1980 Pritikin, as owner, applied for the building to be made a city landmark: the City Planning Commission approved the application by Resolution 8554 on 3 April 1980, and Ordinance 409-80 of the Board of Supervisors, designating it Landmark No. 119, was signed by the mayor on 5 September 1980. The hotel closed in 2000 and the building was converted into two townhouses.

The Chambers Mansion is now two private townhouses and is not open to the public for tours. The property is located at 2220 Sacramento Street between Laguna and Buchanan streets. For those interested in the area's history, nearby Lafayette Park offers views of the mansion's exterior. The house is visible from the street but private property; photography from public sidewalks is permitted. The site is listed on the San Francisco Designated Landmarks tour map.