San Francisco architect John A. Porporato designed this residence in the Italian Renaissance style for Anthony N. Lanza, a native of Italy who owned the Lanza Wine Company, a center of Italian-American life in North Beach.

In 1943, Marjorie Finocchio bought the property and lived here with her husband Joseph Finocchio who owned a female-impersonator nightclub located on Broadway. Between its founding in 1936 and its closing in 1999, Finocchio's attracted over 300,000 customers a year.

In 1954, Stanley Henry Sinton, Jr., and his wife Eleanor bought the house. Eleanor Sinton, usually referred to by the nickname Nell, was a member of one of San Francisco's prominent Jewish-American families who had been residents of the City since 1851. She was one of California's earliest prominent female abstract expressionists and became nationally known for both her paintings and her later assemblages and collages. The culmination of her career occurred in 1981 with a retrospective exhibition covering thirty years.

In 1955, William Wilson Wurster, an architect strongly associated with the regional contemporary styles of the Bay Area, performed major interior alterations to the house under Mrs. Sinton's direction. Wurster's rehabilitation of a period residence served not only as a precursor to his later essays on modernism but also as a model for blending the ideals of California living in the 1950s with those of an earlier era.

Source: Extracted from the NRHP nomination form.