A 1907 Queen Anne Victorian at 137 Elm Street in San Mateo — the birthplace of banking trailblazer Claire Giannini Hoffman and a former residence of Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini — has hit the market for $2.075 million, down $300,000 from its original asking price. The 2,380-square-foot home sits on a 9,000-square-foot lot with a detached garage that includes an original carriage house, a structure realtors say could offer space for an accessory dwelling unit.
The price cut, from an initial $2.375 million listing down to $2.075 million by July, comes as the property is sold by Caminar, a behavioral health nonprofit that has used the home as transitional housing, according to the San Mateo Daily Journal. Caminar has sold about five similar homes over the past couple of years as it winds down comparable transitional housing programs, the paper reports. The nonprofit has never enrolled 137 Elm Street in the Mills Act program, which offers property tax breaks to owners who commit to a 10-year contract preserving a historic structure’s character.
A Home Tied to Bank of America’s Origins
The Elm Street property is where Claire Giannini Hoffman was born in 1904, according to the city’s 1989 historic survey. She went on to become the first female board member of Bank of America, taking her late father’s seat in 1949 and serving until her resignation in 1985, when she protested the sale of the bank’s San Francisco headquarters, per SFGATE.
Her father, A.P. Giannini, founded Bank of America and later moved his family to Seven Oaks, a 10-room Tudor Revival home at 20 El Cerrito Avenue in San Mateo. Giannini bought that property for $20,000 in the early 1900s and lived there until his death in 1949; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Giannini reportedly chose to settle in unpretentious San Mateo rather than wealthy neighboring Hillsborough, according to the same account…