Painted Ladies Revisited: San Francisco's Resplendent Victorians Inside and Out

This new volume in Pomada and Larsen's popular series on Victorian restoration in San Francisco surveys recent additions to that city's trove of ebullient renovated gingerbread. From an original stock of almost 50,000, 13,437 residential Victorians are still standing; much as 19th-century California gold built them, yuppies began financing their rebirth in the mid-'70s. Asserting that those early projects, typified by a whimsical use of bright, contrasting colors, are giving way to a ``more subtle, sophisticated'' style, the book unveils interiors and exteriors of many splendid high-ceilinged, bay-windowed specimens often furnished as lushly as old-time bordellos. Though accompanying text is repetitious, and may state the obvious (``a Victorian profusion of possessions and decoration can be found''), Keister's photographs are irresistible, evoking a dignified fantasy in architecture given a gleefully childish air by San Franciscans. (Nov.)