When the TV series “That’s So Raven” premiered on Disney Channel in January 2003, protagonist Raven Baxter (played by Raven-Symoné) lived in a white Victorian house in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. The quintessential San Francisco home used for the show’s exterior shots was classic, with bay windows, peaked gables and ornamental decorative trim — it was even actually located on Ashbury Street.
Two decades later, the beloved Disney Channel franchise is having a revival with “Raven’s Home,” a spin-off that debuted in 2017. The comedy reintroduces Raven Baxter and her best friend Chelsea (Anneliese van der Pol) as single moms raising their kids together in a Chicago apartment. After four seasons set in the Windy City, Raven and her son Booker (Issac Ryan Brown) relocate back to San Francisco to help her father recover from a heart attack.
Raven is home, kind of
Most of the filming for the show takes place on a set in Los Angeles, but the show’s creative team made sure audiences still felt like they were in San Francisco. The former house exterior from “That’s So Raven” was unavailable for “Raven’s Home,” so they chose a building that was similar enough that the viewer would feel they were entering the same place.
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“Architecturally, they wanted everything the same because they wanted it to be very recognizable. They wanted people to come back to San Francisco, into the Baxter house and go, ‘OK, we’re back in the Baxter house,’” says production designer Kelly Hogan, who modernized the “That’s So Raven” plan originally created by Lynn Griffin. “But Disney and Raven and the executive producers wanted that nostalgia and that recognition, with also just the ability to see that this family has progressed.”
(Charles Russo/SFGATE)
(Charles Russo/SFGATE)
2522 Octavia St. has a white painted facade featuring gabled roofing and ornate molding with floral patterns and gold ornamentation — just like the former Ashbury Street location. Designed as a single-family home, the house was built in 1894, survived the 1906 earthquake, and was later split into apartments. The house includes six units now, and in the 1990s, it transitioned from apartments to condominiums.
“They did a lot of work. They updated plumbing, electrical. They kind of brought the building to [the] 20th century,” real estate agent Yulia Mitchell, who recently sold one of the condos, says.
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Nicolas Baudru, who purchased a one-bedroom in the building in early 2023, has a stunning bay view out his living room window. He removed the unit’s carpeting and installed oak floors, and the focal point of his bedroom is a brick fireplace (not functional, but stylish). He watched “Raven’s Home” and thought Haight-Ashbury (as seen on the original “That’s So Raven”) was “more the vibe” for this TV family than his quiet corner in Pacific Heights was. He also noticed that the Baxters’ home was more colorful than a lot of the units at 2522 Octavia — the real-life building has plenty of white walls. “That’s So Raven” and “Raven’s Home,” however, outfit the family’s spaces with lots of bright colors.
Though Baudru wasn’t yet living there when 2522 Octavia was filmed for establishing shots, Mitchell says “every owner in the building, they had a lot of pride in it.”
Modernizing the Baxter residence
In a Season 6 episode released this summer, Booker opens his attic window to talk to Neil (Felix Avitia) and Ivy (Emmy Liu-Wang), who stand outside a similarly designed window at Ivy’s house. Hogan imagined Booker’s window would be on the side of the house not seen from the establishing shot. “In an effort to kind of tie it into just general Victorian architecture, we did that fish scale siding, tried to do as much Victorian detail without blowing the budget,” she explains.
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A view of the house on Octavia Street in the Marina where shots for the show “That’s So Raven” were filmed, as seen on Thursday, July 27, 2023.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
The interior set brings back Baxter family memories but is updated for a new chapter in the family’s life, including taking care of their young cousin, Alice (Mykal-Michelle Harris). Hogan says she kept a pop of purple in the kitchen, at Raven-Symoné’s request, by designing a custom-made tile backsplash. As seen on “That’s So Raven,” a red vinyl booth in the corner serves as a warm family dining area. Amid the living room’s familiar green walls and dainty design on the glass front door, the window seat area has a fresh leafy green wallpaper print. Raven’s old attic bedroom eventually becomes her son’s room. It’s all a far cry from the condos actually inside.
The Bay Area becomes more involved in the Baxters’ story
On “That’s So Raven,” establishing shots of Coit Tower, the Palace of Fine Arts and the Golden Gate Bridge facilitated scene changes, even though the series didn’t typically place San Francisco landmarks at the center of its stories. Victor Baxter (Rondell Sheridan) opens The Chill Grill early in the run of “That’s So Raven.” This fictional SF eatery is reintroduced on Raven’s Home as a hangout where Raven also has a design studio loft. Booker attends Raven’s old fictional San Francisco high school, Bayside, and stops by the restaurant with his friends often.
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Establishing shots on “Raven’s Home” show cityscapes for day and night, including the Salesforce Tower, the Transamerica Pyramid and the Ferry Building. The current series draws much more on Bay Area tourist activities, too, like Alcatraz, which was recreated for the sitcom for one episode.
A view of the house on Octavia Street in the Marina where shots for the show “That’s So Raven” were filmed, as seen on Thursday, July 27, 2023.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
It was safer and more cost-effective to build most sets in Los Angeles and use special effects than it would have been to film on location in San Francisco, though. Raven is known for getting into unbelievable situations, and when she stops and starts a cable car to try to have a serious conversation with Booker, it wasn’t in San Francisco at all. In another episode, Neil and Ivy hoist a giant burger statue onto the car and then chase their burger down the street — an LA set. “[The cable car] was on a gimbal as well so that it could rock and roll and throw them around,” Hogan says.
In an episode of the fifth season, characters go to Muir Woods and drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to get there. They also go sailing on San Francisco Bay. All three of these activities were included in one single episode — but none were filmed in SF.
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“We have an incredible greensman, and we have an incredible construction crew. So those trees, majority of them are real trees, but the big thick trunks that you see that look like redwoods, those are actually not real. They’re fiberglass trunks … they’re sculpted and painted to look like trees,” Hogan told SFGATE.
The finished products were about 12 feet tall. When the executive producers also asked for a replica Golden Gate Bridge set, the team painted a thick hemp rope red, made rivets for the posts, “and painted the floor to look like the street,” Hogan says. “And then we drove six cars onto the soundstage. Yeah, it was wild.”
The San Francisco home is the place the Baxters always return to, and it’s a deeply nostalgic place for fans of the franchise. But whether they live in Pacific Heights or Haight-Ashbury remains a mystery. “I don’t know if I should say,” she says. “I think it’s intentionally left up to the imagination.”
Allison McClain Merrill is a freelance reporter who has written for Vanity Fair, Today and Glamour.
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