Search Results for “transbay” – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

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WPA Map of San Francisco – Part 2 – SFMOMA, Mission, Noe Valley and Eureka Valley Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 5, 2019

Feb 052019

SFMOMA
Mission Branch Library
Noe Valley Library
Eureka Valley Library

This is the second post in a series covering the joint SF Library system and SFMOMA project Take Part showing the map of San Francisco built by the WPA. Click here for Part 1

SFMOMA

The old Transbay terminal as shown on the map at SFMOMA

The hub of the San Francisco commuter bus and Greyhound system was the old Transbay Terminal. It is shown on the WPA map of San Francisco.

San Francisco’s former Transbay Terminal was built in 1939 at First and Mission Streets as the terminal for East Bay trains using the newly opened Bay Bridge. The Terminal was financed and operated as part of the Bay Bridge and was paid for by Bay Bridge tolls (which were then 50 cents per automobile, or about $7.75 today). At the time, trucks and trains (primarily the Key System) used the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, and automobiles operated in both directions on the upper deck.

Ten car trains arrived every 63.5 seconds. In its heyday at the end of World War II, the terminal’s rail system served 26 million passengers annually. After the war ended and gas rationing was eliminated, the Terminal’s use began to steadily decline to a rate of four to five million people traveling by rail per year. In 1958, the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was converted to automobile traffic only, the Key System was dismantled and by 1959 the Transbay Terminal was converted into a bus-only facility.

A new bus terminal, complete with Public Art has been built. However, due to complications, it was closed soon after its grand opening, and as of this writing (February 5, 2019), it has not yet reopened.

Potrero Hill Branch Library

San Francisco General Hospital as portrayed on the map in the Potrero Hill Library

While a hospital sat on this property for years, in 1915 the “New San Francisco General Hospital”, which was a landscaped, red brick, Italian Renaissance style complex, was dedicated during the City’s celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal, at that time motorized ambulances replaced the horse-drawn vans.

One of the map sections at the Potrero Hill Branch Library

The history buff, and someone who has an entire map of San Francisco in his head, my friend Ted, pointed out that the section in the upper right was moved way too far to the right, none-the-less the map of this area shows how the shipyards and PG&E electrical plant were the main items in the area at the time the map was built.

The produce market as shown on the Potrero Hill Branch Library

The San Francisco Produce Market as shown at the Potrero Hill Branch Library

I could only find a reference to the stadium on a 1950 Sanborn Map calling it “Formerly San Francisco Stadium – removed”. (volume 11 – page 786)

Mission District Public Library

The old San Francisco and San Jose Railroad with its raised beds and bridges as shown on the Mission Branch library section

One of the more interesting things on the Mission Branch library map is the section that shows how the San Francisco/San Jose Railroad (1860s) line actually came through this part of town on raised beds and large bridges where it crossed street intersections. Here is a fun documentary made by CalTrain about the history of the line.

Notice the light wells that abound on the homes that sit wall to wall in the Mission District

Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Branch Library

Mission Dolores, angled off the grid in the center at the bottom, can be found at the Eureka Valley Branch Library

Mission Dolores, the light brown building center bottom, can be found at the Eureka Valley Branch Library

The Eureka Valley section shows primarily the residential neighborhoods, but one interesting building was the German Hospital that sits in the block made up of Noe/Duboce/ Castro and 14th.

The German Hospital

In 1854, the German General Benevolent Society formed the German Hospital to provide healthcare, food, and shelter for San Francisco’s German immigrants, who flooded the City during the Gold Rush. Founder Joseph N. Rausch, M.D., also proposed one of the country’s first pre-paid health plans: for a dollar a month, German-speaking immigrants qualified for a private hospital bed if they ever needed it, at a rate of one dollar per day. In 1895, the Society expanded its membership and was treating all citizens of San Francisco by century’s end.

If you have the chance, please try to visit this project, it is up until March. It is a wonderful view of San Francisco long ago.

If you do, the Librarians have stamps to prove you have been there, so grab a “Take Part” map at your local branch, collect all the stamps when visiting SFPL branches, and return your completed stamped map to win a SFMOMA prize.

Secret Garden

Posted by Cindy on October 22, 2018

Oct 222018

Transbay Terminal
Second and Folsom

Julie Chang is a San Francisco-based artist who, at the time of her selection, coincidentally lived within blocks of the Transbay Transit Center. Chang received her MFA at Stanford University in 2007. She also received an MFA Studio Award from the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito in 2007.

Chang’s 25,000 square foot terrazzo floor of the Grand Hall of the Transbay Terminal is meant to evoke a lush sunlit Victorian garden. Mined from local ecology, design elements include California poppies and jewel-toned hummingbirds highlighted by mirrored glass. Integrated into the design is a subtle overlay of icons and patterns, which are drawn from the rich tapestry of people and cultures across the Bay Area: flower-like circular rings from an Indian sari, cloud-like curves inspired by Chinese embroidery, Japanese crests, diamonds and chevrons found in a variety of sources including African textiles and Grecian pottery, and star and cross motifs from Islamic tiles.

The Transbay Joint Power Authority (TJPA) committed $4.75 million to fund the acquisition of artwork for the program. The TJPA’s commitment is in the spirit of the city and county of San Francisco’s “Percent for Art Ordinance,” which allocates two percent of construction costs for the inclusion of public art in the civic structures and facilities, and is consistent with policies established by the Federal Transportation Authority encouraging the inclusion of art in transportation facilities.

TJPA engaged the San Francisco Arts Commission to manage and oversee the planning and development of the public art program.

The budget for the floor was $1,107,500.

The original proposal presented by Julie Chang to the TPJA for design approval

Bus Jet Fountain

Posted by Cindy on October 2, 2018

Oct 022018

Transbay Terminal
2nd and Folsom

Bay Area artist Ned Kahn has been in this site before. He lived in San Francisco for over 20 years, many of which were spent designing educational exhibits at the Exploratorium. He recently moved to Sebastopol in Sonoma County to expand his studies and laboratory space.

Mr. Kahn’s work is a seamless synthesis of nature, art and technology. With extraordinary technical ability, he demonstrates the versatility of turbulent systems, such as the vortices of wind and water. His dazzlingly complex but comprehendible images of nature respond to viewers, conform to architectural structures, and reveal and make visible inherent environmental conditions.

For the Transit Center, Mr. Kahn will installed a series of water jets on the rooftop park that are triggered by sensors that respond to the vibrations of the flow of buses on the deck below. The frequency, motion and height of the jets will correspond to the level of activity on the bus deck, making the arrivals and departures of the buses visible and tangible through their choreographed effect on the water.

TJPA engaged the San Francisco Arts Commission to manage and oversee the planning and development of the public art program.

The budget for this project was $378,300.

Words in White Light

Posted by Cindy on August 16, 2018

Aug 162018

Transbay Terminal
Second and Folsom

The largest piece of art in the Transbay Terminal is Jenny Holzer’s digital work “White Light,” which encircles the main atrium with 16-foot-high excerpts from historical and literary texts. All related to the Bay Area, they are spelled out in animated, pulsing LED configurations.

Some of these texts are on view for no more than 20 seconds; others run as long as 90 minutes. The longest excerpt thus far, taken from a work by poet Edith Arnstein Jenkins, had to be broken into shorter elements — its full length is five hours and 20 minutes.

The artist told a press tour that the current content total of some 30 hours eventually will double or triple. Holzer said that her piece will give waiting travelers “something to keep them company and to occupy their minds.”

In the daytime, from below, letters are decipherable with some difficulty; from the second floor, one can watch through strips of LED lights, but they are unreadable close-up It is impossible to make out sentences across the way as they circle around. For this reason, I felt this piece was a complete fail. The works are not readable, but they do make for an interesting spinning group of letters to keep you occupied should you need to let your mind wander.

Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950, Gallipolis, Ohio) is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick Falls, New York. The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces.

Holzer’s studies included general art courses at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina (1968–1970), and then painting, printmaking and drawing at the University of Chicago before completing her BFA at Ohio University, Athens.

TJPA engaged the San Francisco Arts Commission to manage and oversee the planning and development of the public art program.

The budget for White Lite was $1,340,000.

Caruso’s Dream Causes Pianos to Fly

Posted by Cindy on January 24, 2014

Jan 242014

55 Ninth Street
Mid Market/SOMA

I spoke with Brian Goggin about his installation of Caruso’s Dream well over a year ago. While it is taking a long time to get installed, and is was not quite finished when I wrote this post, I thought I would bring it to you anyway.

Brian has been in this site many times, you can read all about him here.

This is a public site-specific artwork commissioned by the developers of AVA 55 Ninth, a 17-story apartment complex on Ninth Street, sitting between Market and Mission.

After singing Carmen in San Francisco, the famous tenor Enrico Caruso woke the next morning in his room at the Palace Hotel to the shaking of the 1906 Earthquake. “But what an awakening!” he was quoted in the newspaper, “…feeling my bed rocking as though I am on a ship in the ocean, and for a moment I think I am dreaming.” This artwork, inspired by that quote, imagines Caruso’s dream on that fateful night.

Goggin, studying SOMA history, found that several piano companies were founded in San Francisco, most notably Sherman Clay. Sherman Clay is built on the spot where a piano was buried to fill a large pot hole thus inspiring Goggin and Caruso’s Dream. “Potentially that piano is still under Mission Street today,” says Goggin.

This installation is a joint project with Goggin and Dorka Keehn. They brought San Francisco the “Language of the Birds” that you can read all about here.

To build the 13 pianos, Goggin and Keehn collected 900 pieces of chicken-wire glass of different textures and colors.

The wooden struts that support the pianos were salvaged from pilings in the old Transbay Terminal. The ropes used to lash the piece are modeled after nautical hemp, tied in knots used by longshoremen.

The project was done at a cost of $750,000. This was part of the 1% for the arts program.

For those not familiar with the story:

The evening prior to the Great 1906 Earthquake and fire had been the opening night of the New York Metropolitan Opera Company’s San Francisco engagement. Caruso—already a worldwide sensation—had sung the part of Don José in Bizet’s Carmen at the Grand Opera House on Mission Street. “But what an awakening!” he wrote in the account published later that spring in London’s The Sketch. “I wake up about 5 o’clock, feeling my bed rocking as though I am in a ship on the ocean….I get up and go to the window, raise the shade and look out. And what I see makes me tremble with fear. I see the buildings toppling over, big pieces of masonry falling, and from the street below I hear the cries and screams of men and women and children.”

The Palace Hotel, where Caruso and many others in the company were staying, collapsed later that day, and sadly, not all would make it out alive. Caruso, however, made it out safely, his obviously very devoted valet even managed to remove the bulk of his luggage, which included 54 steamer trunks containing, among other things, some 50 self-portraits. “My valet, brave fellow that he is, goes back and bundles all my things into trunks and drags them down six flights of stairs and out into the open one by one.” That same valet would eventually find a horse and cart to carry the great Caruso and his many belongings to the waterfront Ferry Building—no mean accomplishment on a day when tens of thousands were attempting to escape the fires ravaging the city.

“We pass terrible scenes on the way: buildings in ruins, and everywhere there seems to be smoke and dust. The driver seems in no hurry, which makes me impatient at times, for I am longing to return to New York, where I know I shall find a ship to take me to my beautiful Italy and my wife and my little boys.” By nightfall, Caruso was across the bay in Oakland and boarding a train back to the East Coast.

After this experience Caruso vowed never to return to San Francisco, and he kept his word. Unlike Caruso, I promise to return to the site and bring you photos of the finished project soon.

Embarcadero – Commuting

Posted by Cindy on May 23, 2011

May 232011

This is our temporary Transbay Terminal. The old one has finally been demolished. The Transbay terminal was originally built in 1936 to handle the trains that came across the Bay Bridge into downtown San Francisco. However, after WWII, the train lines were removed and the terminal became a bus depot. Over the years it has become nothing more than a run down homeless refuge. I am all for their tearing down the old one, and I am all for building a new one, but I am not sold on the new ultra modern design to come.

The new Transbay terminal will take years to build. It has been designed by Pelli Clark Pelli Architects. The plan is for a 5.4 acre rooftop garden, 1 million square feet of space, 100 foot high windows and 11 transit agencies. We shall see.

In the meantime, this is our temporary station. I really love this, clean open, easy to navigate. Granted, can be a tad wet and cold in the winter, but hey, this isn’t Chicago.

Here is a short – silent video illustration of what the new terminal is going to look like.