In a city famous for its Victorian houses, a brick Beaux Arts home in Pacific Heights comes as something of a surprise. That it is a duplex—purpose-built as such, and not as a single home later divided—makes it an even greater curiosity. Its new owners, two brothers who grew up visiting their grandmother’s house nearby, were eager to revitalize the two apartments and create two distinctive homes of their own.

“The brothers come from a construction family and grew up in architect-designed homes, so they started this renovation with a high level of understanding,” says architect Dave Sturm, who worked with colleague Federico Engel on the project. The home was built in the mid-1920s by architect Arthur Brown Jr. (he would later design the War Memorial Opera House, Coit Tower, and the Bancroft Library, which holds his archive) for Woolworth executive Arthur J. McClure and his wife, Elenora, with the mirroring upper unit for their niece.

The home’s stately façade “has been lucky,” says Sturm. “It’s well-built, and the brick is tied back to keep it safe,” he adds. Short of small repairs and repainting the wood trim and pedimented front door, he left the front untouched. Inside, the interiors gave the brothers and their team, which included builder Clayton Timbrell, the freedom to embrace original details and re-create period-appropriate features, like new herringbone floors, while modernizing the property with an all-glass rear façade (“It opens everything up,” says Sturm). A new roof deck access panel also doubles as a skylight, brightening the top floor. “Everything in this home is precise, crisp, and clean, with a reverence for craftsmanship, but done in a contemporary aesthetic,” Sturm says. “We kept historical references, but we weren’t tied to the past,” he adds, and the subtle shift from traditional front rooms to more minimalist private spaces in the back is almost imperceptible.