The Haas-Lilienthal House is a magnificent grey Queen Anne Victorian on Franklin Street, built in 1886 for the Bavarian-born grocery wholesaler William Haas and lived in by his descendants until 1972. With its turret, gables, and elaborate wooden ornament, it is the only intact private Victorian house in San Francisco regularly open to the public as a museum, and it gives a rare look inside the kind of mansion that fills the surrounding streets.
Run by San Francisco Heritage, it is preserved with much of its original furniture and fittings, offering a vivid sense of upper-middle-class family life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — including how the house survived the 1906 earthquake. Visits are by guided tour; check the schedule before you go. It is the best single introduction to Pacific Heights' Victorian architecture.