2 Best Sights in Cow Hollow, San Francisco

This eight-sided home was built in 1861, its many walls purporting to provide health benefits through better airflow and more natural light. It sits across the street from its original site on Gough Street; it's one of two remaining octagonal houses in the city (the other is on Russian Hill), and the only one open to the public. White quoins accent each of the eight corners of the pretty blue-gray exterior, and a colonial-style garden completes the picture. Because it's the home of the California Society, the house is full of antique American furniture, decorative arts (paintings, silver, rugs), and documents from the 18th and 19th centuries. Note that the museum is only open on the second and fourth Sundays of each month.

A light-green pastiche of colonial, Queen Anne, Moorish, and Hindu opulence, with turrets battling red-top onion domes and Victorian detailing everywhere, this 1905 structure is considered the first Hindu temple in the West. Vedanta, an underlying philosophy of Hinduism, maintains that all religions are paths to one goal. It's an interesting building to study from the street.