Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Category: Embarcadero

  • Point of View

    Point of View

    Pier 27    Point of View is comprised of two sculptures that resemble lighthouses — one is installed at the Port of San Francisco, and an identical tower is in Haifa, Israel. Viewers look into a periscope-like screen to see a live feed of the other location. The installation is dedicated to San Francisco’s late…

  • Our Silences

    Our Silences

    Harry Bridges Plaza Until October 15, 2015 The Consulate of Mexico and Rivelino are touring Nuestros Silencios (Our Silences) sculptures, to deliver a message about freedom of expression. Each sculpture has a metal plate covering its mouth as an allusion to censorship. The artist hopes the installation will prompt reflection about the importance of speaking…

  • Trader’s of the Adriatic

    Trader’s of the Adriatic

    The banking lobby at the Sansome Street entrance to the Bentley Federal Reserve contains a mural by Jules Guerin. “Traders of the Adriatic”  features prominently in the entrance to the main lobby. It pays homage to the world of banking with its depiction of Venetian shipping merchants accepting receipts for goods on deposit and slaves attending…

  • Torso With Arm Raised II by De Staebler

    475 Sacramento Street Financial District De Staebler has appeared on this website before.  Stephen De Staebler, a sculptor whose fractured, dislocated human figures gave a modern voice and a sense of mystery to traditional realist forms, died on May 13 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 78. This bronze sculpture is an abstract figure…

  • Cloud Portal

    Cloud Portal

    Corner of Washington and Davis Golden Gateway Center This sculpture is titled Cloud Portal and is by Ned Kahn. Kahn has several sculptures around San Francisco Mist periodically emerges from the central void of a sculpture constructed out of stacked horizontal sheets of stainless steel. The mist alternately reveals and obscurs the view of the urban…

  • George Rickey and his Kinetic Sculptures

    Sydney Walton Park Two Open Rectangles Eccentric Variation IV Triangle Section by George Rickey 1977  George Rickey has several kinetic sculptures around San Francisco. Rickey (1907-2002) was one of two major 20th-century artists to make movement a central interest in sculpture. Alexander Calder, whose mobiles Mr. Rickey encountered in the 1930’s, was the other. After starting out…

  • Celebrating the UN Charter through Art

    Hinckley Walk at Golden Gateway Commons Fountain by Jaques Overhoff Jacques Overhoff has several pieces around San Francisco.  Overhoff was born in 1933 in the Netherlands and studied at the Graphics School of Design and the University of Oregon.  He moved to San Francisco in the 1950′s.

  • Henry Moore at 1 Maritime Plaza

    1 Maritime Plaza Standing Figure Knife Edged by Henry Moore – 9161 This is an enlarged bone with the addition of a small head. Moore had always been fascinated by bones. “Since my student days I have liked the shape of bones, and have drawn them, studied them in the Natural History Museum, found them…

  • Icosaspirale

      1 Maritime Plaza Icosaspirale by Charles Perry – 1967 – 8 feet – Brass  This sculpture is constructed of bronze rods brazed together into triangular sections. Those sections were assembled into an Icosahedron shape. Note that each triangle that makes up the Icosahedron is itself a spiral. Hense the name “Icosaspirale Charles O. Perry (1929-2011) was…

  • Peacock Fountain at 1 Maritime Plaza

    1 Maritime Plaza Embarcadero This Peacock fountain was designed by architect Robert Woodward. Robert Raymond (Bob) Woodward (1923 – 2010) was an Australian architect who gained widespread recognition for his innovative fountain designs. Woodward was educated at Granville Technical Granville and Sydney Technical College.Upon completion of his military service he enrolled in the architecture course at…

  • University of Wisdom in the Financial District

    310 Battery Street Financial District Embarcadero * This piece sits on the other side of the Old Federal Reserve Building from Dionysus and Hermes, also by Armand Arman. The French-born American artist Arman told an interviewer in 1968. “I have never been — how do you say it? A dilettante.” Arman’s vast artistic output ranges…

  • The Mathematical Concept of Tau in Sculpture

    160 Spear Street SOMA’s Financial District Tau by Roger Berry – Stainless Steel – 1984 96″ Diameter 14″ Deep Each of the four intersecting cones of Tau describes the form of the solar year. The forward side is in full light in the winter the back surfaces are filled with the summer sun. The building to the…

  • Pacific Bird

    Golden Gateway Embarcadero/Financial District 551 Battery Street * Pacific Bird by Seymour Lipton  1961 Seymour Lipton (1903-1986) was an American abstract expressionist sculptor. He was a member of the New York School who gained widespread recognition in the 1950s. Lipton was interested in art as an adolescent. Although his high school teachers wanted Lipton to…

  • Fort Mason – Wind Arrows

    * * Sailboat wind indicators mounted at on 3-foot intervals on a flagpole at the east end of Fort Mason illustrate how the laminar flow of wind changes with the height.  This variation is often more complex and dramatic than expected.  Along the San Francisco shoreline, for example, the difference of only 20 feet in…

  • The Embarcadero – Rincon Annex Murals

    The Embarcadero Rincon Annex 98 Howard Street Panel #17 Panel #17. “Vigilante Justice Vigilance committees formed during the 1850’s in San Francisco to counteract excessive criminality and a weak city government. These committees handed down verdicts on their own terms. Vigilante justice was also popular in mining towns. This panel depicts vigilante actions in 1856…

  • The Embarcadero – Rincon Annex Murals

    The Embaradero Rincon Annex 98 Howard Street Panel #10 Panel #10. “Raising the Bear Flag The Bear Flag revolt established the Republic of California, one month before the United States won the territory in the Mexican War. John Charles Fremont was a prime force in instigating the revolt and William B. Ide became president of…

  • Rincon Annex Murals

    The Embarcadero Rincon Annex 98 Howard Street Panel #3 The murals in the Rincon Annex Post Office, have lived a long and very controversial life.  In 1941 the WPA held a competition for the murals, it was won by Anton Refregier.  He began work immediately and kept at it until they were finished in 1948,…

  • Rincon Center Rain Column

    The Embarcadero Rincon Annex Post Office 98 Howard Street The word “rincon” means “inside corner” in Spanish. In 1939, architect Gilbert S. Underwood, most famously known for his design of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite, designed this Art Deco-Moderne structure for the United States Post Office.   In the 1980s the building was put up…

  • The Embarcadero – History of our Street Names

    The Embarcadero Looking Down and Learning History Archetypical Gold Rush San Franciscan, Sam Brannan was first in many achievements.  He arrived in Yerba Buena by sea in 1846, leading two hundred Mormon pioneers, and founding the city’s first newspaper.  He rode through the streets of San Francisco in 1848, announcing the discovery of gold for…

  • Embarcadero – History of Street Names

    The Embarcadero Continuing on our journey of “Looking Down” Quartermaster’s clerk of the Stevenson Regiment of First New York Volunteers, Edward H. Harrison came from an obscure post to occupy a respectable role in the nascent civic affairs of San Francisco, becoming Port Collector in 1848 before returning to the East in 1850.  Harrison typified…

  • Embarcadero – History of Street Names

    The Embarcadero Continuing to look down.  Vallejo Street These four are so badly worn, but this is what General Vallejo looked like It reads: Soldier, land-owner and diplomat, General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo started life as the son of a Spanish soldier, and rose from cadet to Commandante of Monterey.  From there he assumed command of…

  • Embarcadero – History of Street Names

    The Embarcadero When this is the view from the Embarcadero it is hard to look down at your feet.  If you do however, you will find some fascinating little historical tidbits.  I searched everywhere to see what organization is responsible for the following and I found nothing.  But welcome to a bit of San Francisco…

  • The Embarcadero

     Bronze Horse” by Marino Marini.  The fountain behind it is by Robert Woodward. Real estate development projects in San Francisco are required to develop public spaces in order to obtain project approval. A good example of this is at the One Maritime Plaza building, located at Battery and Clay Streets, near the Embarcadero Center office…

  • The Embarcadero – Sidney Walton Park

    Sydney Grant Walton, for whom the park is named, was a San Francisco banker who lived from 1901 to 1960. Reportedly he was a multitalented business- man, cultural leader and vice-chairman of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. As the plaque outside the park states, he was “vital in the formation of the concept and development…

  • Sydney Walton Park

    This is one of the entries to Sydney Walton Park in the Embarcadero Area of San Francisco.  It sits surrounded by Jackson, Pacific, Davis and Front Streets.  This wonderful park is full of art, and history.  It is just a marvelous oasis in the middle of lots and lots of high rises.  You will also…

  • Embarcadero – Commuting

    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…

  • Embarcadero – Fly me to the Moon

    Embarcadero at Pier 14 “Raygun Gothic Rocketship” is a temporary art installation on the Embarcadero.  The project is sponsored by the Black Rock Arts Foundation, (the Burning Man group), with support from the Port of San Francisco.  The rocket ship is a retro-futurist sort of thing, and according to the artists group “A critical kitsch…

  • Edgar Walter and Electric Power

    Edgar Walter and Electric Power

    Pacific Gas and Electric Building 245 Market Street Embarcadero/Financial District Above the arched entryway to the Pacific Gas and Electric building is this bas-relief depicting the primary activities of the company, hydroelectric power.  At the top is a waterworks with water pouring through three openings symbolizing the “falling waters” that come from the mountains.  This…

  • 245 Market Standing As A Remembrance of Skyscrapers of Old

    245 Market Standing As A Remembrance of Skyscrapers of Old

    245 Market Street Financial District / Embarcadero The seventeen story Pacific Gas and Electric Company General Office Building, designed by Bakewell & Brown and built between 1923 and 1925, is one of a series of skyscrapers built during the 1910s and 1920s which imparted to San Francisco its downtown character. This character of large ornamented classic buildings…

  • The Embarcadero Ribbon

    The Embarcadero Ribbon

    The Embarcadero The Ferry Building, built in 1898, sits at the foot of Market Street. In 1953, San Francisco proposed the Embarcadero Freeway that was to connect the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges. Construction started at the Bay Bridge end; after 1.2 miles of freeway were built, neighborhood organizations began to gather and oppose the…