10/15/2026
AHEADJournal For more than thirty years, David Ireland (1930–2009) lived inside a sculpture. The sculpture was his house, a shabby Victorian at 500 Capp Street in the Mission. When Ireland bought it in 1975, it was full of junk from the accordion maker who had lived there. The junk became Ireland’s sculptural material.
Ireland had a late start in the art world. He was an insurance salesman, a tour guide in Africa, a seller of exotic goods. One day, as the story goes, he lent a stuffed elephant foot to an art student who used it in a show, which so inspired Ireland that he enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute, graduating when he was in his mid-forties.
Ireland was prolific, but 500 Capp Street has always been his most important work. We may generally think of sculpture as a building-up of material. Ireland’s approach was a paring down. The wallpaper, paint, window moldings, door frames—all these were stripped away to find the house within the house. What followed was thirty-something years of variations on form.
500 Capp Street 500 Capp Street is now a foundation entrusted to preserving Ireland’s legacy. It is a studio, a gallery, an archive, a showcase of his work. This month we spoke to the curatorial director, Lian Ladia Lian Ladia , to get her view of this much-storied two-story home.
Read more on California: A Journal. Link in bio.
📷 Ekaterina Izmestieva .
