635 Ashbury Street
Haight Ashbury · San Francisco, CA 94117
Eight apartments over four storeys on a 2,500-square-foot lot, built the year before the earthquake. A published guide to notable residences names it as a Janis Joplin address and calls it "the pink house".
Three addresses, one tenancy
The same guide that places Joplin here also places her at 122 Lyon Street from June 1967 to April 1968 — citing her driver's licence — and records a competing claim for 112 Lyon Street. Three buildings are in circulation for one period of one person's life. None of the three claims has been traced here to a primary source, and this page does not adjudicate between them.
Permit history
Nine of the 22 permits on file are street-space or sidewalk occupancy filings at a nominal $1 valuation, omitted here. What remains is a decade-by-decade cycle of apartment rehabilitation, filed in matched pairs, around two jobs that touched the whole building.
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Dec 2024
Open walls for electrical and plumbing in one apartment; new exterior vent; replace kitchen counters.
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Oct 2024
Upgrade the building fire alarm system to comply with SF Fire Code section 1103.7.6.1.
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Nov 2022
Rehabilitate an apartment kitchen and bath and install a washer and dryer. The matching filing for a second apartment was cancelled.
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Jun 2015
Two apartment remodels — kitchen and bathroom services upgraded, ten windows repaired in kind, none facing the street.
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Jan 2012
Replace 21 windows across the front of the building in kind, no change in dimension — wood-clad double-hung sash.
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Oct 2011
Two more in-kind kitchen and bath upgrades, with high-efficacy lighting.
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Jan 2004
Repair stairs (under 50 percent) and siding not visible from the street.
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Jul 2001
Strip hallway lath and plaster, insulate and drywall; remove damaged siding at the porch.
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Dec 1996
Reroofing.
Not yet documented: the architect, builder and original permit; when the building was divided into eight apartments; and any primary-source basis for the Joplin claim or for choosing between this address and the two on Lyon Street. Know any of it? Tell us — just describe it in plain words.