Built in 1881 and designed by William Curlett in a mix of Stick, Eastlake, and Queen Anne styles, it survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

[3] It was built with modern conveniences including heating, hot and cold running water, and indoor toilets,[1][3][4] and had a porte cochère (now removed), many bay windows, and an open octagonal candle-snuffer turret.

[5] The mansion was built in 1881 for Theodore Fryatt Payne, whose father, also called Theodore Payne, had become wealthy in the Gold Rush and who made his own fortune manufacturing nuts and bolts, and his wife Mary Pauline O'Brien, who inherited the largest share of her uncle William S. O'Brien's silver fortune from the Comstock Lode.

[1][3][4][6] A March 1882 article in a builders' magazine projected the cost of construction at $16,500; both the lot and the building contract were in Mrs. Payne's name.

[10][11][12] It was bought in 2018 by Bernard Rosenson, a Southern California hotelier, and late that year the Mansion on Sutter hotel opened there, with a French restaurant named 1881.