Inside the Arts and Social Club from San Francisco’s Master Showman

Design impresario Ken Fulk has transformed a historic church into St. Joseph’s Arts Society for emerging artists and an extravagant site for legendary parties.


“When I first saw it, it was filled with 10,000 pigeons and was raining inside,” says Ken Fulk of the earthquake-ravaged Romanesque-revival church he has restored to become St. Joseph’s Arts Society, a new arts club in San Francisco, where the interior designer and event planner is based. “It had this decrepit grandeur with a higher calling.” Three years later, sumptuous furnishings, antique sculptures, and contemporary art fill the soaring space, now an incubator for emerging artists and a showstopping site for Fulk’s legendary parties. Tucked among the vestry and choir lofts are a cocktail lounge, an Assouline book salon, a Carpenters Workshop Gallery, and the French apothecary boutique Buly 1803. “You can buy a drink, a book, or an extraordinary piece of art,” Fulk says. “It’s a place to celebrate how art in every form elevates our lives.”