Originally, in 1882, this was a costly house. Frederick Wieland paid $6,000 for the vacant lot, and over $10,000 to have the building constructed. These added to nearly three times the original costs of some houses on today's tour. (Remember the inflation multiplier?)

Wieland hired the architectural firm of Kenitzer & Raun to design the house. That would be Henry and Charles Kenitzer, and Edward T. Raun, partners 1870–1886. Raun had been in California since 1849, Henry Kenitzer, from Saxony, since 1854, and his 9-years-younger brother Charles since 1862. Most of their works disappeared in the 1906 fire, but some probably survive in Pacific Heights. They had well-known clients and did a lot of expensive buildings. They must have satisfied the Wielands, because four years later, in 1886, Frederick's brother John had them design the house next door at 2018 California.

The Wielands for whom these houses were built were a different family from the makers of Wieland beer. These were wholesale provisions merchants. They imported items such as butter and cheese, and probably supplied them to mining expeditions and the like. In 1875 the company's personal property had been assessed at $4,700 for provisions, $150 for furniture, and $865 for money.

By 1886 Frederick Wieland had retired, and he died about 1893. His widow Anita stayed on in the house. Eventually she married one Fred or James Larkin, eight years her junior and a rate clerk with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. The 1900 census found them in the house along with the children from her first marriage, Frederick A. Wieland, born in 1875 and continuing in the produce business; her daughter Anita, born in 1883 and later married to a dentist Reuben Hale; and a Chinese cook named Look Chin. The property stayed in the family through the 1930s.