Former home of crime writer Dashiell Hammett lists for $6.25M

A 1910 Tenderloin apartment building that “Maltese Falcon” author Dashiell Hammett once called home is on the market for $6.25 million. 

The 35-unit-building at 620 Eddy Street was listed this week in conjunction with a neighboring 35-unit apartment building around the corner at 237 Leavenworth Street for a total of 58 units at a combined asking price of $10.5 million. 

The buildings have seen interest from both local and out-of-town buyers since they came on the market, according to Andrew Black of Berkshire Hathaway Drysdale Properties, who is listing the properties along with Michael Johnston and Stephen Pugh.

“The Tenderloin is an easier market to jump into,” he said, compared to “nicer” neighborhoods to the north. “The rents are lower but, relative to the price point, the return is greater.”

Both buildings were purchased in 2019 by Mahr Elder, according to public record, an oral surgeon with offices around the Bay Area. Elder paid a combined $11.5 million at the time, just before the pandemic led to a prolonged drop in rents, from which downtown locations like the Tenderloin have had a particularly hard time recovering. 

“The biggest objection we’ll face is the perception of crime and homelessness,” Black said. “But you can buy a 10- to 15-unit apartment in the Marina for the same price as 23 units as this area.”

Black said the owner is looking to move his equity out of state to Arizona and Texas, where he also has investment property. Two different buyers could buy the properties or one could buy them together, but the buildings must close at the same time because Elder has one loan covering both properties, he added.

Leavenworth is the smaller of the two buildings, with 23 studios that are “fully occupied” with “solid in-place rents,” according to the listing notes. Hammett’s former home on Eddy has 30 studios and five one-bedrooms, most of which were “lightly renovated with new flooring, granite countertops and new paint upon turnover.” Black said one-third of this building is vacant, giving the new owner a “future value add” opportunity.

Hammett lived in San Francisco for most of the 1920s, and the majority of his “ground-breaking hard-boiled detective fiction” was written in the Tenderloin, according to the Tenderloin Museum. He worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the Flood Building on Market Street near the cable car turnaround, which gave him inspiration for his most famous character, the hard-drinking PI Sam Spade. He is played by Humphrey Bogart in the 1941 movie adaptation of “The Maltese Falcon,” which is often considered the first film noir. 

Hammett wrote that story and several others after he had already left Eddy and moved to 891 Post Street. He left the city altogether and moved to New York in 1930, where he wrote his other well-known work, “The Thin Man,” which became a successful film series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Hammett died in 1961, but the city has paid tribute to his time in San Francisco, from a Tenderloin walking tour of his haunts to an alleyway named in his honor between Bush and Pine streets. 

The city and the infamous Falcon are so intertwined that a plaque on Burritt Street doesn’t even mention it by name. It simply reads: “On approximately this spot, Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade, was done in by Brigid O’Shaughnessy.” 

Correction: This story was updated to show the correct address of Hammett’s former home and add broker comment.