San Francisco Landmark #9
Belli Building
722 Montgomery Street Between Washington and Jackson
Built 1851

The following is adapted from the San Francisco City Planning Commission Resolution No. 6274 dated October 3, 1968:

Originally built in 1849 or 1850 and destroyed by fire in 1851, the Belli Building was immediately rebuilt, using the old walls and foundations. The building is built upon the original raft of planks, six to eight inches thick and to a depth of eight feet laid as a foundation in the mud of what was then Yerba Buena Cove. It is said that the tides still rise and fall in the elevator shaft.

The building was first known as Langerman's Tobacco and Segar Warehouse then the Melodeon Theatre where Lotta Crabtree performed. The stage door was in the alley to the rear. Tunnels, which are now blocked off, led to buildings across the alley.

After the theater, tenants in the 1860's included commission merchants and an auctioneer. In the early 1870's the building housed a Turkish bath. In the 1880's a medical establishment, using hydrotherapy, continued to operate the baths. From the 1920's onward it was used as a paper warehouse and also as a garment factory.

In 1959, the building was acquired by Melvin Belli and converted to law offices for his firm. The chief alterations were decorative: plaster covering brick was removed; a cast iron frame running around the top and sides of some windows was exposed, and a wrought iron gate from New Orleans was added.

The heavy cast iron pillars on the façade are also said to have come from New Orleans as part original building. The interior columns are thought to be ship's masts. Some of the heavy ceiling beams are originals. The floors are double, and between upper and lower planks on each, they are fireproofed with sand or with terra cotta.

The brick of the walls is of two types: a hard-fired one thought to have been brought round the Horn from New York; the other, soft-fired and made in Sacramento. There is an open courtyard between this building and the adjacent one, also owned by Mr. Belli. Shutters on the building are now wooden, replacing the original iron ones.

Melvin Belli was known as the King of Torts for his success in litigating notorious personal injury cases. He represented Sirhan Sirhan who assassinated Robert Kennedy, and Jack Ruby who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald. Other clients included Errol Flynn, Ferdinand Marcos, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Errol Flynn, Chuck Berry, Muhammad Ali, the Rolling Stones, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Martha Mitchell, Lana Turner, Tony Curtis, and Mae West.

After winning a court case, Belli would raise a Jolly Roger flag over his office building and fire a cannon, mounted on his office roof, to announce the victory and the impending party.

Belli married six times and divorced five times.

His marriage to his fifth wife, Lia Georgia Triff, ended with a colorful divorce proceeding in 1988, in which Belli was fined for calling his wife "El Trampo" and accusing her of throwing their pet dog off the Golden Gate Bridge.

In 1996, Lia Triff married Paul-Phillipe Hohenzollern, Prince Paul of Romania, in Bucharest.

On 29 March of the same year, Belli married his sixth wife, Nancy Ho.

Three months later on 9 July 1996, Belli died at the age of 88.

The Belli Building and the adjacent Genella Building were vacated after they were structurally damaged by the Loma Prieta Earthquake on 17 October 1989. The buildings were vacant for over twenty-five years.

Both buildings were eventually gutted and rebuilt as apartments. Only the façades were saved.

The old Belli Building reopened in 2015 as the "Landmark 9" residences. Apartments ranged from 423 square feet to 1,100 square feet and monthly rents ranged from $3,500 to $7,500. (Source: Hoodline)

The Belli Building is in the Jackson Square Historic District.

Façadism

Wikipedia defines Façadism (or Façadomy) as the practice of demolishing a building but leaving its façade intact for the purposes of building new structures in it or around it.

The International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (The Venice Charter of 1964) provided the doctrinal foundation for the modern preservation movement.

Although the United States did not participate in the preparation of the charter, the charter provided the basis for the Secretary of Interior's Standards for Historic Preservation. US/ICOMOS was founded in the 1960s to foster heritage conservation and historic preservation.

Article 1 of the Venice Charter

The concept of a historic monument embraces not only the single architectural work but also the urban or rural setting in which is found the evidence of a particular civilization, a significant development or a historic event. This applies not only to great works of art but also to more modest works of the past which have acquired cultural significance with the passing of time.

Article 7 of the Venice Charter

A monument is inseparable from the history to which it bears witness and from the setting in which it occurs. The moving of all or part of a monument cannot be allowed except where the safeguarding of that monument demands it or where it is justified by national or international interest of paramount importance.

Article 13 of the Venice Charter

Additions cannot be allowed except in so far as they do not detract from the interesting parts of the building, its traditional setting, the balance of its composition and its relation with its surroundings.

Paul Golderberger, writing in the New York Times on 15 July 1985 (Façadism on the Rise: Preservation or Illusion?), gives an argument against urban façadism.

For façadism holds out a great temptation. It seems, on the surface, to give both sides what they want. The small, older buildings valued by preservationists appear to be saved, while the large new ones developers seek can still be built.

But while façadism pretends to a certain earnestness, it is at bottom rather pernicious. For the compromise it represents is not really preservation at all. To save only the facade of a building is not to save its essence; it is to turn the building into a stage set, into a cute toy intended to make a skyscraper more palatable. And the street becomes a kind of Disneyland of false fronts.

Façadism in San Francisco:

• Belli Building, 722 Montgomery Street
• Borel and Company, 440 Montgomery Street
• Engine Company No. 14 , 1047 McAllister Street
• Genella Building, 726-728 Montgomery Street
• Hoffmann Grill Building, 619 Market Street
• Italian American Bank, 460 Montgomery Street
• South End District
• United States Mint & Subtreasury, 608 Commercial Street

Some examples elsewhere:

• Minden Butter Manufacturing Company, Minden, NV