Pre-COVID and before my dad’s many complications following his February surgery, I was planning a surprise trip for the Grim Cheaper’s March birthday. Even though it involved a flight, I was over-the-moon excited about it. Our travels obviously had to be postponed and, considering the current climate, who knows when we will be able to embark upon the short getaway. In light of my and so many others’ vacation delays, I figured a virtual trip was in order! So I enlisted my BFF Nat, who lives in the Bay Area, to do some stalking on my behalf. Though I consider all locations immensely important to a production (duh!), the residence I sent her to stalk is the centerpiece of The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Without the spectacular house at the heart of the feature, there is no story. So, obviously, one look at the trailer, and I was all in! The 2019 drama tells the tale of Jimmie Fails (played by the actor of the same name), an SF native obsessed with restoring his childhood home, a towering Victorian that his grandfather built by hand in 1946. The only problem? His family no longer owns the place. But that doesn’t stop him from painting the eaves, weeding the yard, and, in a bold move, secretly moving in. The movie couldn’t be more up my alley if it tried! Before watching even a single frame, I did some research on the property that figures so prominently in it and sent Nat right out to stalk it.
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Known as the John Coop House in real life, the stunning Queen Anne Victorian was designed by German-born architect Henry Geilfuss for mill owner John Coop in 1889. Coop did much of the carpentry himself and, upon its completion, utilized the ornate residence as a showpiece of his work.
Said to be at 959 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco’s Fillmore District in the movie, the home actually stands at 959 South Van Ness Avenue in the Mission.
The massive property, easily the grande dame of the neighborhood, boasts 6 bedrooms, 3 baths, a whopping 5,240 square feet, a carved staircase, wainscoting throughout, a wood-paneled library (with a secret chamber concealed behind a bookshelf!), a formal parlor, ceiling frescoes and friezes, stained glass windows, a tiled fireplace, a turret capped by a “witch’s hat,” and a 0.10-acre lot (which is actually pretty spacious for San Francisco).
Though the house is striking both onscreen and off, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, sadly, left me wanting. On paper, the narrative (loosely based upon Jimmie Fails’ real life) couldn’t be more compelling, but it moved slowly (almost painfully at times), bounced around in too many directions, and as a whole felt lacking. That’s not to say there aren’t good points. I fell in love with the main characters, Jimmie and his BFF, Montgomery Allen (Jonathan Majors) – serious #friendshipgoals there! Cinematically, it is one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen and, having grown up in the Bay Area, I can say paints a very accurate portrait of life in the city (especially that bus stop scene!). And hey, I’m willing to forgive all being that the house is not just a character in it, but the character! Location manager Daniel Lee certainly had his work cut out for him in finding the ideal residence to ground the movie – a painstaking process that, per Curbed, took several years. It was worth the elbow grease, though, because Lee hit the nail on the head with the John Coop House! I don’t know how one could look at the image below, with the pad showcased in widescreen glory, and not be smitten! Of scouting for the location, director Joe Talbot said, “We wanted to find a place that would hopefully make the audience feel those things Jimmie is feeling. It sounds silly to say this, but we needed the house to feel like a character, to feel developed, to go through its own arc.” Talbot obviously doesn’t read my blog – if he did, he’d know that’s not a silly sentiment at all!
Interestingly, in the first two shots we get of the dwelling, there are discrepancies. Though the images are shown within minutes of each other and are supposed to represent the same day, some changes occur from one to the next. As you can see in the first shot (the top screen capture below), the residence to the direct left of the John Coop House has a light green roof and the pad two doors to the right is painted yellow. In the second shot, though (lower cap below), the property to the left has a dark green roof and the one two doors down is now black. Talbot did express to Curbed that the rapidly shifting nature of the city posed some problems for the shoot. The article states, “Changes to approved and permitted filming locations happened so quickly—sometimes from one day to the next—that they created continuity challenges and compromised the film’s cinematography.” I am guessing this is one of those instances. I’m shocked it wasn’t noticed – and corrected – in post-production, though.
The odd triangle-topped garage door ornamentation, which was (thankfully) covered in foliage for much of the shoot and only unveiled at the end of the movie after Jimmie’s childhood home has supposedly been renovated, is unsightly, to say the least. Per the San Francisco Daily Photo blog, the Coop House originally boasted a single garage that was enlarged (to its aesthetic detriment) in 1998. You can see a photo of it prior to the augmentation here.
The film certainly showcases the rest of the Coop House in spectacular fashion.
And the interior is even more magical than the exterior!
It is so ornate and enchanting, in fact, that I thought it could only be the stuff of a production designer’s imagination – a production designer with a hefty budget, no less. I was thrilled to discover that was not the case. Incredibly, the ornate detailing captured so beautifully onscreen is authentic to the residence! As stated in Curbed, “Everything you see in the film—the hardwood floors and the intricate period molding, yes, but also the secret room behind a bookshelf, the built-in organ, the attic big enough to host the play-within-the-film, even the sauna—is actually in that damn house.” An architectural survey of the property conducted in 1975 sums the place up perfectly, noting it “has one of the most outrageous interiors – ornament is heaped upon ornament.” You can check out some fabulous photos of the inside of the Coop House here.
In a case of art imitating life, for decades the pad has been owned by a man whose life has been shaped by it. Retired chemist Jim Tyler was first introduced to the Victorian in the early 1960s when he attended a party there. Wholly transfixed, he acquired the place just a short time after, trading his own house for the then-stark property, which did not even have heating at the time. He was forced to sell it within two short years and moved away from San Francisco, but, like Jimmie, the home always remained close to his heart. When Tyler returned to the city in 1970, the house happened to be for sale and he liquidated all he had to re-purchase it. A man after my own heart, he has spent the last five decades assiduously restoring and enhancing it, as well as researching and documenting its history. The John Coop House is certainly the love of Tyler’s life, as it was onscreen in Jimmie’s – and his adoration for it shows clear as day to anyone who passes by.
Big THANK YOU to my friend Nat for stalking this location for me! 
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Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The John Coop House, aka Jimmie’s childhood home from The Last Black Man in San Francisco, is located at 959 South Van Ness Avenue in the Mission District.