Most stories will tell you that San Francisco has two octagonal houses. Both are immaculately preserved historic landmarks and are sometimes even open for tours. But a third, often forgotten, octagonal house lies abandoned among the cypress forests on the cliffs of Lands End.
The unusually shaped house on the hill above the Cliff House was once one of the most important structures in San Francisco. Officially named Point Lobos Marine Exchange Lookout Station, the building had the sole purpose of letting the city know who was sailing toward the bay.
There was a lookout station at Lands End as early as 1852, when hundreds of ships with crews feverish for gold were sailing towards the Golden Gate. Initially, the means of communication from the vantage point was via a semaphore system, with raised wooden arms angled to indicate the type of ship entering. The signal was seen by a second station at the Presidio and relayed over the hills to Telegraph Hill, where downtown businesses know a ship is approaching, wrote historian John Martini in his 2009 essay.
By 1927, when the Octagon House was built directly on the hill from an earlier lookout station, a telephone and radio system achieved the same goal.
Eight-sided houses were something of a fad in Victorian times, but the trend never really caught on. Disadvantages of octagonal living included awkward triangular spaces, doors that cut off other spaces when opened, and their propensity to collapse in natural disasters. The Lands End house was one of the last octagons to be built, probably due to the 360 degree view the shape afforded from the top floor.
A garage was located on the ground floor, as it is today; a living area filled the second floor, and above it was the viewing room, with a huge telescope centered in a wraparound balcony. Back then, no trees blocked the view of the Pacific.
Businessmen gather to celebrate the opening of the Marine Exchange Lookout at Lands End on February 1, 1927.
Western Neighborhood Project – marine_exchange_sfbusiness_1927
The first tenant of the building was a seafarer named Julius Larsen and his young family. Born in Norway, Larsen reportedly sailed around the world three times before settling in San Francisco.
A 1931 newspaper profile revealed a glimpse into Larsen’s unique everyday life.
“If a ship pushes its funnel over the horizon 32 miles from the Golden Gate, Julius Larsen can look through his 12-foot glass and say the name of the distant ship,” reads the story.
Larsen claimed he could name any boat by looking down its funnel as it passed the Farallon Islands. He then relayed that information to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce over the phone so businesses like hotels and immigration at the Embarcadero could be prepared across the city.
Larsen’s night watchman and eventual successor was a man named William Morrissey. William became part of the family when he married Larsen’s daughter, Annie. William and Annie lived and worked in the building with their four children for decades.
Due to advances in technology, the station’s equipment was decommissioned in 1968, but the National Park Service allowed the Morrisseys to continue renting the residence for $25 a month. However, the valet probably didn’t anticipate that their tenancy would last into the 21st century.
The view of the Golden Gate from the cliffs, a few hundred yards down the hill from the old lookout station, Lands End, San Francisco, March 2023.
Andrew Chamings / SFGATE
“Thankfully nobody asked us to move,” Annie told reporters in 1974, a year before William’s death. “We just wouldn’t know where to go after all these years.”
Long after the building fell into disuse and her husband died, Annie Morrissey climbed the spiral staircase to the third floor, took her binoculars, stepped through the door onto the balcony and gazed out over the sea.
“It’s a lifelong habit, I can’t resist, can I?” she told the LA Times in 1983. “There’s always something fascinating out there on the water.” She added that she occasionally saw fishing boats in distress and called the Coast Guard to continue the family tradition of her late husband and father.
Remarkably, Annie lived in the octagonal house until 2002, making her both the first and last tenant there. “I grew up in this tower as a kid,” she told the newspaper. “We were lucky. This is one of the best places in San Francisco. Check out the view.”
After their departure, the tower was abandoned.
It is believed that only 68 octagonal houses remain in the United States today. The other two in San Francisco — the McElroy Octagon House at 2645 Gough St. and the Feusier Octagon House at 1067 Green — are preserved as curious architectural relics. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the old octagon at Lands End.
The Lands End octagon house, San Francisco, March 2023.
Andrew Chamings / SFGATE
I ventured out to the house on a cold, bright March morning to see what was left of it.
For a building that once had one of the widest views in San Francisco, the old lookout at Lands End is remarkably tucked away down a winding, wooded path near Fort Miley.
There are no restrictions or barriers around the graffiti-covered building, but be careful as broken glass and crumbling stucco litter the leafy ground. The curved staircase leading to the second floor front door has been removed.
From the top of the hill nearby you can see that the door between the balcony and the viewing room, from which Annie Morrissey would emerge, is (a bit eerily) open.
The growth of cypress and Monterey pine trees around the property has now obscured most of the ocean views, but the trees have also created a calm there where the sounds of woodpeckers and finches are louder than the tour buses and traffic below . Without the graffiti and rubbish, the site could be a very special landmark or museum dedicated to those who watched over the waters a century ago.
Unfortunately, it looks like that won’t happen any time soon.
“The Octagon House is one of only hundreds of historic buildings in our park,” National Parks spokesman Julian Espinoza told SFGATE. “Although we are not planning any changes to the site in the near future, we continue to maintain the building and the surrounding area. … Unfortunately we don’t have any funding at the moment to rehabilitate this unique historic building.”
Until then, you must imagine the abandoned tower in its former glory.
The octagonal home is about 50 yards from a path that connects the El Camino del Mar parking lot and Fort Miley at Lands End.
