This Pacific Heights Victorian mansion was built for a very wealthy family sometime in the early 1880s. The San Francisco building department records were burned in the 1906 earthquake, but remarkably the city water department still has a record that this building tapped into the city water service on 31 August 1882. The records also indicate that the builder was Hinkel, most likely a reference to the Hinkel family. The first Hinkel was a German immigrant named Charles E. Hinkel, who arrived in San Francisco in 1852 and started a multi-generational family construction business. His son was Charles Lewis Hinkel, who lived from 1847 to 1908. Charles Lewis had three sons and a grandson who continued the family business. Given his age, Charles Lewis Hinkel was most likely the family member responsible for the mansion at 2159 California Street. The ground floor contained the carriage house, horse stable, kitchen, servants quarters, and the general facilities to serve the family and maintain the house. The family lived on the middle floor and the top floor. By modern standards, the twelve feet ceiling heights on the middle floor and top floor are unusually high. The original lights in the mansion burned gas, and so the high ceilings allowed the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide to mix into a greater volume, thereby maintaining a lower concentration of both in the air. In the morning, the servants would open up the tall windows to let the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide out and to bring fresh air into the mansion. Remarkably, this mansion survived the 1906 earthquake. Sometime during its long history, the mansion was converted into eleven apartments, mostly studios.