The home has brown shingles, it is the last house on Havens, and there is a “pentshack” on the roof. This building is similar to how I visualized 28 Barbary Lane.'Īlthough 39 Havens isn’t an apartment building, in many ways, it does match some of the descriptors of Mrs. However, when your tour guide saw 39 Havens for the first time, he said to himself, “This is where I would have Anna Madrigal live.

It is the nearby city of Oakland’s.Īrmistead Maupin has stated that he never had any particular building in mind when he created Anna Madrigal’s apartment house. She moved into a vacant apartment in Jake Greenleaf’s building in the Dubose Triangle ( Michael Tolliver Lives).Īnd finally, here’s a bit of trivia regarding the production of the “More Tales of the City” miniseries: The nighttime skyline of San Francisco seen out of Brian’s apartment in the pentshack is not San Francisco’s skyline. After a stroke, Anna could no longer manage the steps at Barbary Lane.

In the early 1990’s, Anna sold the building to a Hong Kong investor and she became just another tenant at 28 Barbary Lane.

Your tour guide does not know if Havens ever had wooden steps. The steps at Havens have been concrete since at least the time when Maupin lived at 1138½ Union Street. Madrigal and Michael chained themselves to the steps in preparation for Mary Ann’s arrival with a camera crew to film the protest. On the day the wrecking crew was to arrive to start demolition of the steps, Mrs. The City of San Francisco intended to remove the wooden steps and replace them with reinforced concrete. Madrigal lead a local – a very local – campaign to keep the wooden steps.

In Significant Others (set in 1984), Mrs.

Looking north out of the pentshack windows, one can see the lighthouse on Alcatraz.

Looking south out of the pentshack windows Brian could see Lafayette Park, St Mary’s Cathedral, the Mark Hopkins, and the Superman Building.It had a courtyard that was entered via a lych gate.Its ceiling was pressed-tin covered with 1930’s hieroglyphics. The building’s foyer was decorated with tarnished deco ladies and gilded mirrors.The stairs to the pentshack were internal as well.

28 barbary lane