Most drivers moving through the Van Ness corridor today — threading between elongated Muni buses and car dealerships, past apartment buildings, churches and restaurants — have no particular reason to look at the corner of Clay Street and imagine what used to stand there. There is no plaque, no monument, nothing prompting the imagination.

Yet for a brief moment at the turn of the 19th century, this was the address of one of the most elaborate private homes built in San Francisco: the Van Ness Avenue mansion of Claus Spreckels, a German immigrant who turned sugar into one of the great American fortunes of the era.

The majority of San Franciscans today who know the Spreckels name likely either associate it with a lake in Golden Gate Park or a different house altogether — the white beaux arts palace on Lafayette Park in Pacific Heights, with its storied hedge that shields the manse from the street like a fortress wall. 

Article continues below this ad

That mansion, also built by the Spreckels family, in 1912-1913, is arguably the most recognizable residence in the city, famously occupied for decades by romance novelist Danielle Steel. It is grand, intact and very much present. The Van Ness mansion is none of those things.

The Sugar King arrives

Claus Spreckels (left) and his son John D. Spreckles.

Claus Spreckels California Sugar Refinery in San Francisco, 1881.

After spending a few years in Charleston, South Carolina, and New York City working as a grocer, Claus Spreckels arrived in California in 1856. He died about a half century later as one of the wealthiest men in the country. Spreckels built his empire in sugar — refining, shipping and distributing it at a scale that earned him the title “Sugar King.” His operations spanned plantations on Hawaii and railways and real estate across California. His children ate up the benefits. John D. Spreckels, one of Claus’ sons, eventually took over the ownership of the San Francisco Call........

© SFGate