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‘Piece of Art’: This Stunning San Francisco Loft Inspired a Bidding War

In San Francisco, if you don’t want to live in a downtown high-rise, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a modern home that’s not an apartment. This probably explains the speed with which this industrial-style loft listed for an eye-popping $5 million was snapped up. Now pending sale after a bidding war, the property is in contract.

“We were over run,” listing agent Payton Stiewe says about the response to the listing. The fully renovated building was once a tooth powder factory and then a laundry service for the surrounding restaurants.

“It’s a sign [that] today’s buyers are no longer looking for a cookie-cutter-type home. They want something unique. This fits totally this profile. People were floored,” says Stiewe.

You can add us to that category, along with Dwell magazine, which featured the 3,500-square-foot loft in 2012. The space is as unique as the street art hung on its walls, including a floor-to-ceiling Shepard Fairey original by the steel staircase.

The owners, designers Jeff Wardell and Claudia Sagan, chose the former factory as part art gallery to showcase their collection. And they set out to make their home a masterpiece of design. The showstopper: Two stacked and cantilevered shipping containers in the middle of the main floor—a clever innovation that adds rooms without traditional walls.

The two had purchased the place in 2008 and “completely gutted it down to the studs,” Stiewe says. During the renovation, they removed part of the roof, allowing the shipping containers, selected by the owners at the Port of Oakland, to be dropped in.

The containers now open with sliding glass doors and include walls of plasma glass, which becomes opaque at the flick of a light switch. There’s a bedroom suite with a custom Murphy bed in one; in the other,  up the stairs, there’s an office with reading loft.

There are two more en suite bedrooms with baths, including a “sensuous master” with two-headed glass shower and teak vanity. The main floor has a 17-foot-high ceiling, skylights, and a chef’s kitchen with center island. There’s also a theater room, dimmable lights, radiant heat, dumbwaiter, intercom system, and two-car garage.

For a residence in the middle of the lively Fillmore district, crowded with shops and restaurants, there’s a surprising 800 square feet of tranquil outdoor space. In addition to a grill, eating area, and Japanese hot tub, there’s a “massive catamaran-style hammock” on a second deck.

The deck is covered with a nautical netting, which hovers above photos of the ocean that are printed on aluminum sheets.

“You’ll feel like you’re floating on the sea,” the agent says.

The owners, who also love to travel, have decided to move to a new project in New Zealand.

“This is a piece of art,” Stiewe says. The next owners will know that they alone “have the honor to preserve it and pass it to the next generation.”

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