San Anselmo Home With Music History Up for Sale

A Marin County home with a lengthy music history is on the market for the first time in more than a decade.

The home at 1405 San Anselmo Avenue in San Anselmo is on the market for $4.4 million, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The sellers, venture capitalist Doug Penman and his wife Samantha Lyman, have renovated the property extensively since buying it in 2014, the San Francisco Standard reported.

The property, a former Presbyterian church, was converted into a recording studio in 1966, and later, a home. The San Anselmo property consists of two church buildings connected by a cube structure. The residence boasts five bedrooms and four full bathrooms across 4,300 square feet.

Former Sons of Champlin sound technicians Paul Stubblebine and Bruce Wolford established the studio in the mid-1960s and transferred ownership to musicians Dave Kessner and Bill Steele in 1974. Performers such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Huey Lewis, Van Morrison and Jefferson Starship walked through the doors in its years as a recording studio and artist residence. The downstairs bedroom served as storage for the Beatles’ instruments before their final San Francisco performance at Candlestick Park in 1966.

The main living area of the home was used as a live performance space for visiting artists. Today, it maintains some of that aesthetic with vaulted ceilings, exposed steel beams and stained concrete floors. The rest of the house has another living area, two bedrooms, a dining room, kitchen and a patio. Besides the main house, a former rectory sits on the property with an address at 21 Humboldt Avenue. That structure is now a two-bedroom, one-bathroom cottage.

Previous homeowners include Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly, often credited with creating the modern mountain bike. Fisher and Kelly stayed in the cottage while working as crew members for bands who came to the studio to record.

Marin County is known for its often eye-popping home prices, particularly in tony enclaves like Sausalito and Belvedere. The median home price is $1.5 million, according to Zillow.

The $4.4 million list price in San Anselmo pales in comparison to the most expensive home on the market in the county at the moment: a 40,000-square-foot compound in Belvedere asking $50 million, The Real Deal reported last month. “The Crest,” as the property is known, consists of eight bedrooms and 11 bathrooms and is the priciest listing in Marin County so far this year.

— Chris Malone Méndez