Tours of the Tales

In Mary Ann in Autumn, Armistead Maupin changed the location of the stairs.  Rather than being located inside the building, the stairs were initially located on the exterior – reflecting the Barbary Lane set in the three miniseries.  As Mary Ann stood outside her old home, she noticed that the outside stairways had been moved or modified making the building now appear to be a single family dwelling.

The pentshack set in the first miniseries was built atop a building in North Beach that contains both a San Francisco police station and a city parking garage (below in this tour).  The pentshack in the second and third miniseries was built on a soundstage in Canada.  The set for 28 Barbary Lane for the 2019 Netflix series was built inside a sound stage in New York. 

Havens Lane

Here are some specifics about 28 Barbary Lane from the Tales books:

• Mrs. Madrigal lived on the first floor.  Mona and Michael shared the two-bedroom apartment on the second floor.  Mary Ann’s and Brian’s apartments were on the third floor.  Norman Williams lived in the pentshack on the roof of the apartment building. 
• Eventually, the pentshack became the “TV Room” for the residents of Barbary Lane.
• After Brian and Mary Ann married and moved up to the Summit, Brian’s 19-year old nephew, Jed, moved into their old 3rd floor apartment.
• From his 2nd floor apartment, Michael could see the neon fish on Alioto’s restaurant at Fisherman’s Wharf as well as the lighthouse on Alcatraz.
• After Michael and Thack moved into their own home overlooking the Castro, Polly Berendt, a lesbian who worked for Michael at Plant It Earth later moved into Michael’s old 2nd floor apartment.
  

• The stairs were internal.  The stairs to the pentshack were internal as well.
• The building’s foyer was decorated with tarnished deco ladies and gilded mirrors.  Its ceiling was pressed-tin covered with 1930’s hieroglyphics.
• It had a courtyard that was entered via a lych gate.
• Looking south out of the pentshack windows Brian could see Lafayette Park, St Mary’s Cathedral, the Mark Hopkins, and the Superman Building.  Looking north out of the pentshack windows, one can see the lighthouse on Alcatraz.
• In Significant Others (set in 1984), Mrs. Madrigal lead a local – a very local – campaign to keep the wooden steps.  The City of San Francisco intended to remove the wooden steps and replace them with reinforced concrete.  On the day the wrecking crew was to arrive to start demolition of the steps, Mrs. Madrigal and Michael chained themselves to the steps in preparation for Mary Ann’s arrival with a camera crew to film the protest.  The steps at Havens have been concrete since at least the time when Maupin lived at 1138½ Union Street.  Your tour guide does not know if Havens ever had wooden steps.
• In the early 1990’s, Anna sold the building to a Hong Kong investor and she became just another tenant at 28 Barbary Lane.  After a stroke, Anna could no longer manage the steps at Barbary Lane.  She moved into a vacant apartment in Jake Greenleaf’s building in the Dubose Triangle (Michael Tolliver Lives).

And finally, here’s a bit of trivia regarding the production of the “More Tales of the City” miniseries:  The nighttime skyline of San Francisco seen out of Brian’s apartment in the pentshack is not San Francisco’s skyline.  It is the nearby city of Oakland’s.

"Welcome to 28 Barbary Lane.”

Although Armistead Maupin largely modeled Barbary Lane after Macondray Lane, Havens is where he actually located Barbary Lane in the Tales books.  As mentioned just above in this tour, while writing the beginning of “Tales of the City” serial in The Chronicle, Maupin lived in a roof top studio looking down on Havens Lane.  

Armistead Maupin has stated that he never had any particular building in mind when he created Anna Madrigal’s apartment house.  Her building is completely fictitious.  However, when your tour guide saw 39 Havens for the first time, he said to himself, “This is where I would have Anna Madrigal live.  This building is similar to how I visualized 28 Barbary Lane."

Although 39 Havens isn’t an apartment building, in many ways, it does match some of the descriptors of Mrs. Madrigal’s apartment house.  The home has brown shingles, it is the last house on Havens, and there is a “pentshack” on the roof.   However, rather than entering the property through a lych gate, visitors enter 39 Havens.

However…the building on which Maupin lived in his own pentshack – the one you just saw at 1138 ½ Union Street – also matches many of the descriptors of 28 Barbary Lane.  Like Anna Madrigal’s apartment house, it has several floors, internal stairs, and there is a pentshack on the roof.

An interesting coincidence:  Armistead Maupin’s pentshack at 1138 ½ Union is directly behind 39 Havens.

So, it’s up to you to envision 28 Barbary Lane.

Enough of the wishful thinking that there really is a 28 Barbary Lane and back to “the facts”:

The set for 28 Barbary Lane used in all four of the miniseries was not based upon the descriptions of the apartment house found throughout the Tales stories.  Rather, the set was modeled on an apartment house on Napier Lane (below in this Tour).  Not only are the stairs in the apartment house in the miniseries external, the set for 28 Barbary Lane is painted white - matching the apartment house in Napier Lane - rather than brown as described in the Tales books.  The set’s color was corrected by the third miniseries.