Malloch Building

The Malloch Building is a private residential apartment building on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco designed in the Streamline Moderne style and built in 1937. The building, one of the best examples of its type in San Francisco, is also known as Malloch Apartments, Malloch Apartment Building, and simply by its address: 1360 Montgomery Street. Some have called it the "Ocean-Liner House", though other Moderne buildings have also been known by that nickname.^[1]


Designed by Irvin Goldstine for contractor John "Jack" S. Malloch and his publisher son, John Rolph Malloch, the building was used as a filming location in 1947's Dark Passage, a noir work starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.^[2][3][4]

Use[edit]

Before the building was completed, it was fully rented. In 1937, the two Malloch men moved into the two penthouse suites in the 12-unit apartment building, collecting rent from the other 10 tenants.^[2]


The Malloch Building was featured in the 1947 film noir work titled Dark Passage. In the film, Humphrey Bogart, playing an escaped prisoner, is invited by Lauren Bacall into her apartment unit, Number 10 on the third floor of the Malloch Building. In the apartment, Bogart hides out while he heals from plastic surgery, and plots to clear his name. Bogart wearily ascends the nearby Filbert Steps in one scene, on his way to the Malloch Building.^[2] Modern-day residents have been known to put a cutout of Bogart in the street-facing window of Number 10.^[8]


Owner/occupant John Rolph Malloch died in 1951 at the age of 39.^[9] In the early 1980s the building was converted from rental apartments to condominiums.^[1] The original plans had been lost to fire, so the renovating architects had to form new plans taken from measurements of the building.^[10]


A six-page writeup about the building appeared in Architect and Engineer in December 1937. The article listed the owners and the structural engineer, but did not name the architect. In the early 1980s, geologist and architectural historian Gray Brechin discovered that Irvin Goldstine had designed the building; Brechin subsequently interviewed Goldstine regarding his career. An article about the discovery was printed in Metro Magazine, a defunct San Francisco magazine. Until that time, the building was thought to be designed by the Mallochs.^[2][3]