The Heney-Deming house at 273 Page Street covers the entire 27 1/2 foot frontage of the lot, with service from Rose alley. Demolition of the house next door affords a view of the typical San Francisco antique house: a plain box with a pretty face. Like the graceful Italianates at 198 Haight Street and 390 Page Street, this house's main cornice is supported on massive brackets interspersed with panels and a spool-like dentil molding. Renaissance corner boards emphasize the façade's vertical strength.

The five sided bay window has two openings at the front and fully round on the second. Colonnettes with Corinthian capitals and applied garlands define major divisions of the bay windows, and stylized flower buds droop between the front windows. A secondary cornice continues around the porch, which has smooth round columns and pilasters with Corinthian capitals, wooden bands, and carved garlands of fruit. Conical urns trim the porch balcony. An arched pediment is broken by a gargoyle, a final bit of whimsy.

The impressive front hall has a particularly graceful staircase with original walnut newell post and newell lamp, and light colored stencil work by Larry Boyce in the frieze area as well as above the lincrusta wainscoting. The tan brick Mission style fireplaces must be replacements after 1906 earthquake damage. Restrained Classical pediments surmount the doorways of the major rooms.

The house was built for Richard Heney, Jr. in the ten months after
August 9, 1877, when he bought the vacant lot for $2,453. Heney had arrived in San Francisco at the age of 16 with his large Irish family. Son of a mattress maker, he waited on tables on Montgomery Street at 18, worked for a fancy food importer, and then along with his father in an uncle's furniture store. He eventually became a partner. At age 31 he moved here with this wife Mary, sons 6 and 2 and his Irish father-in-law. The family was blessed with three additional children in this house, and four more after Heney became a winegrower in Santa Clara county.

On August 4, 1883, the house was purchased for $11,000 by Joseph Grove Deming, the 54-year-old president of his family's Capitol flour mills in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Demings were an old Connecticut family. Joseph and Mary Deming moved here with their five children aged 10 years to six months, with a Chinese servant and boarder. “Severely honest” and of kindly and modest demeanor, Deming enjoyed scholarly and musical pursuits shared with his family. One of his musical daughters became a nun, the other a doctor's wife. All three sons were active in the milling business. In 1901, Deming sold the mill and retired. He died in 1909, and his widow retained the house until 1915.

In 1978 the house was purchased by the San Francisco Zen Center, which dedicated it to Edward Kunze, a renowned western scholar and writer on Zen Buddhism. In its current use as a hospice, the rooms are sparsely furnished.

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