Above the first floor on the eastern half of the facade is a frieze consisting of nautical motifs, including dolphins, lighthouses, sailing ships, and seahorses, in bas relief.

[4][5] Hippolite d'Audiffret (anglicized as "Audiffred"), a Frenchman who had been living in Mexico and reportedly walked to San Francisco from Veracruz after Emperor Maximilian and the French became unpopular there, and built a profitable business selling charcoal in Chinatown.

With the decline of San Francisco's waterfront in the mid-twentieth century, the Seven Seas Club for homeless sailors moved into the building in 1946,[3] and bohemian artists and writers including Elmer Bischoff, Howard Hack, Frank Lobdell, Hassel Smith, Martin Snipper, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti occupied lofts and studios on the two upper floors, which had no electricity,[7] until they were condemned as unsafe in 1955.

[3] Ferlinghetti told The Paris Review (#228, Spring 2019 issue, p. 179) that he paid $29 a month in rent for his studio here where he made his first very tall paintings, that the only heating source was from a potbellied stove in one corner, and that the artists there could only work during the daytime because of the lack of electricity.

[4] The building was subsequently bought by real estate developer Dusan Mills and in 1983–1984 was refurbished and remodeled into office space[10][11] by William E.