Tours of the Tales

Armistead Maupin immortalized his Pentshack – as he called it – by using it as the model for the pentshack atop Mrs. Madrigal’s apartment house.  Like Brian from the pentshack atop 28 Barbary Lane, Maupin had an unobstructed view of the “Superman Building” (the Bellaire Tower above in this tour).

Armistead Maupin also called the Pentshack the “Little Cat Feet” taken from a line in a Carl Sandberg poem, “The fog comes in on little cat feet”.  

Not long after “Tales of the City” caught on, Maupin moved from the Pentshack to the “Duck House” at 60 Alta on Telegraph Hill.

In the bottom photo on the left, the tiny two windowed, reddish-brown pentshack atop 1138½ Union can be seen just below the center of the photo "poking" over the rooftops.

1138½ Union – The studio apartment atop 1138 Union

Armistead Maupin lived in a small rooftop apartment (read:  “Pentshack”) at 1138½ Union for three years in the early 1970’s.  He returned to this Pentshack for a while when he started writing “Tales of the City” for The San Francisco Chronicle.  From that aerie, he could look down onto Havens Lane (coming up next on this tour).  His Pentshack can be seen in this photo to the right:  It’s the red structure set back from the street on the roof of the two-toned brown apartment building in the center of the photo.

1138 1/2 Union - Armistead Maupin's Pentshack