"Up at Fulton and Scott is a great shambling old Gothic house, a freaking decayed giant, known as The Russian Embassy" Tom Wolfe wrote in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).

The Westerfeld House, designed by Henry Geilfuss, was built in 1889 for banker and candy baron William Westerfeld, one of many prosperous German immigrants who built grand homes in the area around Alamo Square. This great wooden palazzo is a pure expression of the style, Stick Italian Villa, with its tower, square bay windows and strong vertical line.

Among its subsequent owners was John J Mahoney the builder of the Palace Hotel, the St. Francis Hotel, and the open air Greek theater on the campus of the University of California in Berkeley. But by The Summer of Love and The Autumn of Love, like many of San Francisco's grand but derelict old mansions, its roof leaked and it was home to a commune and it was this commune, Calliope, that Wolfe visited.

San Francisco tour books and tour guides, eager to flaunt The City's perverse past, have decided that Charles Manson once lived here. He did live in San Francisco, but not here.

But Bobbie Beausoleil did live here just before he joined The Manson Family. He and his buddy Kenneth Anger, also in residence, would spend nights in the tower on the look-out for flying saucers. According to Anger he had "a couple of very good flying saucer sightings."