Pre-Civil-War frame house at Fort Mason where U.S. Senator David Broderick died three days after his 1859 anti-slavery duel with Justice David Terry; today an officer's quarters within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Franklin Street at Fort Mason, Quarters 3, San Francisco, CA 94123
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Fort Mason grounds and the Great Meadow are free to visit. Haskell House (Quarters 3) is a private federal residence — exterior viewing only from the public path.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved paths around the Great Meadow at upper Fort Mason; modest slope to the Quarters 3 viewpoint.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1855 · Site of Senator David Broderick's death (September 16, 1859) · Direct connection to last notable American political duel · Civil War-era Army confiscation (1863) · Component of Fort Mason / Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Leonidas Haskell, a Boston-born friend of senator David Colbreth Broderick, built the frame house at Black Point in or about 1855. The site sits on the bluff above San Francisco Bay; in the years before the Civil War, Black Point was a fashionable residential area outside the immediate footprint of the city.
Broderick was a working-class Democrat and one of the loudest anti-slavery voices in California politics; in 1859 he and California Supreme Court Justice David S. Terry — a pro-slavery Democrat — exchanged escalating insults that culminated in a formal duel. The two met at dawn on September 13, 1859, on the shore of Lake Merced south of San Francisco. Broderick's pistol discharged into the ground; Terry then fired into Broderick's chest. Broderick was carried to Leonidas Haskell's home, the closest residence belonging to a political ally, where he died on September 16, 1859. His death made him a martyr for the California anti-slavery cause in the years immediately preceding the Civil War.
The Union Army confiscated the Haskell property and the surrounding Black Point bluff in 1863 to construct Civil War coastal fortifications. Haskell unsuccessfully sued for return of the property and continued to challenge the confiscation until his death in January 1873. The house was incorporated into the Army's Fort Mason post as Quarters No. 3 and used as officers' housing.
Fort Mason transferred from the Army to the National Park Service in 1972 as part of the newly established Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Quarters 3 remains in federal use as park-staff or partner housing; the duel and Broderick's death are interpreted on Park Service wayside panels and on the official Golden Gate NRA website.
Sources
The most consistent account from the Haskell House is of a tall apparition in a long dark coat and top hat seen on the upper floor and pacing the upstairs hall. The figure is typically identified with David C. Broderick, who lay dying in an upstairs bedroom for three days following the duel. Officers and their families assigned to Quarters 3 across multiple decades have reported the same general phenomenon: the impression of an unseen presence following them through the upstairs hall, brushed-by sensations on the staircase, and — recurringly — the feeling of being observed in the bathroom and shower.
A secondary tier of lore concerns the cellar. According to local ghost-history features and to GGNRA staff oral tradition, Haskell and Broderick are said to have used the house to conceal escapees from slavery before the Civil War, and some accounts describe figures glimpsed in the cellar that are attributed to those refugees. The Underground Railroad connection is not independently documented in surviving Park Service records — it appears primarily in haunted-history features rather than in the historical archive — and should be treated as folk-history rather than as established fact.
Because Quarters 3 is a federal residence and not open for public tours, paranormal reports come almost entirely from successive military and Park Service residents. The persistence of the same core descriptions (tall figure, top hat, upstairs hall) across multiple unrelated residents over a century gives the testimony weight even where individual details cannot be verified.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Self-guided walk past Quarters 1-4 on the upper Fort Mason parade ground, including the Haskell House. The site is interpreted by GGNRA wayside panels covering the Broderick duel and the Civil War-era Army garrison.
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