Perched on Dolores at Cesar Chavez is a house with the kind of cardboard cornice you see everywhere. But the fun thing about this one is the shamelessness of its pretense. On the south end, an ornamental bracket props up the unapologetically decorative end of the sham. The longer you look at this façade, though, [...]

This English Gothic church seems to use the Rennaisance technique of perspective distortion to enhance its presence on Church Street.

Early features of Mario Botta’s San Francisco Museum of Modern Art bear resemblance to those of the Mausoleum of Emperor Augustus in Rome. Parallels between museums and mausolea are rife in the history of the de Young as well. What is it about art and death that moves us to inter them so?