A firehouse for a family

The former Chemical Engine House 44 at 3816 22nd St. in Noe Valley is filled with unique stories.

First, the structure that was built in 1910 served as a San Francisco firehouse until 1959, originally holding a horse stable before the city used fire trucks.

After the firehouse was closed, artists Mark Adams and Beth Van Hoesen bought it at auction for $7,500 in 1959. The couple would convert the property into a studio and residence, with Adams turning the 17-foot-tall stable into a light-filled studio where he designed tapestries and stained-glass windows.

Van Hoesen, a printmaker, housed a turn-of-the-century Scottish press in the annex formerly used as the firemen's dining hall.

After their health began to decline, they sold the property in 2006 to Chris Dolan and Jamie McGrath, investors who gutted the interior of the home and converted it into a modern, four-story, single-family home while restoring the home's fire station exterior. (Adams died later in 2006; Van Hoesen died last November.)

Paragon Real Estate agents Joe Marko and Rafael Acevedo now have the property listed for $4.25 million.

"Back in 2006, Chris and I were looking for another property to work on, and Joe came across this old firehouse," said McGrath, who works as the engineer on their projects. Dolan, an architect, "has the vision of putting these projects together, and as soon as he walked in and saw the volume of the space, he realized all the things we could do with it."

So they purchased the property for $2.1 million in February 2006 and began a 16-month conversion that turned it into a four-bedroom home with two full baths and two half-baths.

"The first vision that went through Chris' mind was that we could add an artificial floor of living space in the main stable area that had 17-foot ceilings," McGrath said. "That would allow us to make a bigger product, add more square footage; so we created this kind of floating second floor."

The property's main floor features a family room with a tall wall of windows that looks out to a rear patio area and up to the "floating" second-floor kitchen.

The second floor also holds a living room and dining room that connects to an island kitchen with stainless steel appliances, a range hood and glass-fronted cabinetry. The kitchen also offers views of the wall of glass and rear outdoor area.

A number of bedrooms and bathrooms, along with a gallery-library space, take up the third floor.

The fourth floor houses the master bedroom area, as well as a glass bridge under a ceiling of glass that connects the bedroom to a spa area. There's also a top-floor roof terrace and an indoor viewing tower with vistas of Noe Valley.

Those are McGrath's favorite spots in the house.

"That old fire tower has a 360-degree view of Noe Valley, and that roof deck we created has a similar perspective, but just outside on a patio," he said.

For Marko, the central staircase is the one part of the house that he never gets tired of seeing.

"The challenge that they had with this property was getting light to the core of the house, since it's a deep house and a firehouse wasn't built to have light and air," he said. "So Jamie and Chris carved out a center staircase that goes up the complete center of the house and added a huge skylight atop it that gives light to the entire home. Looking up that staircase is pretty spectacular architecturally, and it's functional as well.

"It always gets a response from people when they come to the house."

Not only was the spirit of the firehouse retained in many places, such as the station's old call box that sits in the new media room and the display case of old beer cans workers found during the renovation. But Dolan and McGrath also made efforts to maintain the artistic history of the home, creating large gallery walls and hallways that could be used to display artwork.

A while back, Marko showed it to a woman who was a Van Hoesen collector and had no idea it was the artist's former studio.

"The mother was with her son who was looking at it, and they asked who the artists that lived in it were, and before I could even finish my sentence she knew exactly who it was," he said. "It made her so emotional she had to sit down."

Marko said the typical buyer profile for the home has been that of a younger male in the high-tech industry who's looking for a home to show off and entertain. But he didn't count out a family buying the home, either.

"Kids absolutely love the house, because it's like a huge tree fort to them," he said. "They can climb all over the place, and it works surprisingly well for them."

This article appeared on page M - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle