Pacific Heights
Hilltop enclave of Gilded Age mansions and chateaus with sweeping bay and bridge views.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Pacific Heights in San Francisco traces a century-old dispute over who modeled for the bronze goddess atop Union Square's Dewey Monument, a rumor that starts with Alma de Bretteville, a Danish laundry-delivery girl turned artist's model on this very street. It follows her courtship by sugar heir Adolph Spreckels, twenty-four years her senior, and the fifty-five-room French limestone chateau he built her as a wedding gift around 1913. A later thread follows her collecting of Rodin bronzes in Paris and the fortune she inherited after Adolph's death in 1924.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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