Category: Financial District
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The Hunter Dunlin Building in the French Romanesque Style
111 Sutter Street The Financial District 111 Sutter Street, or the Hunter Dulin Building, is a terra-cotta clad building modeled on a French château. This 22-story French Romanesque building is topped with a 38-foot high mansard roof sporting both dormers and gables. The building was designed by New York architecture firm Shultze and Weaver for Los Angeles…
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The Adam Grant Building
114 Sansome Street Financial District The garland façade, as well as the coffered entryway, were removed in the 1960s. Over the course of its 145-year history, the Adam Grant Building at 114 Sansome Street has gone through several iterations. Constructed in 1867, the first building housed the dry goods business of Daniel Murphy and Adam…
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450 Sutter, A Mayan Palace
450 Sutter Street is San Francisco’s monument to the Mayan Revival branch of Art Deco. Art Deco draws on a variety of sources including Art Nouveau, Cubism and the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Art Deco celebrates the technological wonders of the early 20th century, the frivolities of the roaring twenties, and the hard times of…
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Ghost Figures of the Financial District
580 California at Kearney Financial District This building sits on the corner of Kearny and California Streets. It has twelve untitled figures along the four top edges resembling ghost forms wrapped in long cloth garments. They were created by the sculptress Muriel Castanis from 1982-85 for a commission by the building architects Philip Johnson and…
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Mark Twain and his Jumping Frogs
Foot of the Transamerica Pyramid 600 Montgomery Financial District * Frog Pond by Richard Clopton Bronze 1996 Redwood Park Transplanted from the Santa Cruz Mountains 60 miles to the south, magnificent redwoods dominate this park designed by Tom Galli. The fountain designed by Anthony Guzzardo is decorated with the jumping frog sculptures, in a fond remembrance of…
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200 California Street
200 California Street Financial District Hawaiian by Gwynn Murrill – Bronze- 2002 This is part of San Francisco’s 1% for Art Program. San Francisco’s “Downtown Plan” adopted in 1985, was developed under the fundamental assumption that significant employment and office development growth would occur. New commercial development would provide new revenue sources to cover a…
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Dancing Dahlias on Claude Lane
8 Claude Lane Union Square/Financial District * This mural, (on the outside of Claudine Restaurant) is by Vogue TDK. According to an interview he did with 1:AM he got into graffiti in late 1984, after school, I turned on the TV to the local PBS station and caught the start of the documentary “Style Wars”. There…
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Financial District- Fire Station #13
Fire Station #13 Financial District 530 Sansome Street * Untitled by Henri Marie-Rose 1969 Henri Marie-Rose (1922-2010) born in François, Martinique, the son of Appien Constance Raymonde and Quentin Joseph Marie-Rose Dite Cétoute, Henri Marie-Rose Dite Cétoute, who later simply went by Henri Marie-Rose, was a San Francisco resident for 58 years, living initially in…
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Financial District – Guardian by Bruce Beasley
Financial District 600 California Street Guardian by Bruce Beasley – Bronze – 1992 Made possible by the 1% for Public Art Program This sits at the top of the stairs of a public space that you enter through Kent Roberts’ Bridges. Bruce Beasley (1939) is an American abstract expressionist sculptor born in Los Angeles and…
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Financial District – Three Bridges by Kent Roberts
Financial District 600 California Street Three Bridges by Kent Roberts – 1992 Public Art made possible by the 1% for Public Art Program Kent Roberts has appeared in this site before. Roberts has a BFA and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. He also has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University…
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Financial District – The General Harrison
Financial District 425 Battery Street The General Harrison by Curtis Hollenback and Topher Delany The financial district of San Francisco was built on mudflats. At one time, the muddy shoreline came up to Montgomery Street. The mudflats were riddled with hulls of abandoned ships left by their crews when they headed for the gold in the…
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Pacific Coast Stock Exchange
Financial District Pacific Coast Stock Exchange The Pacific Stock Exchange began life as a classical U.S. Treasury building, then in the 1930’s, Timothy Pflueger was hired to turn it into the Stock Exchange. He was growing weary of classicism but was instructed that the granite stairs and the ten Tuscan columns had to remain. The…
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Bankers Heart
Financial District – San Francisco 555 California Street This is in the center of A.P. Giannini Plaza. A.P. Giannini was born in San Jose, California and was the Italian American founder of the Bank of America. He founded the Bank of Italy in 1904. The bank was housed in a converted saloon directly across the…
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Icons of San Francisco – Transamerica Pyramid
, An iconic image for San Francisco, the Transamerica Pyramid. It was designed by architect William Pereira, and when it was first built it engendered considerable argument. You either hated it or loved it, there seemed to be no in between. Forty Eight stories or 850 feet tall, it was among the five tallest buildings…
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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…
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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…
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Fountain at One Bush Plaza
Financial District One Bush Plaza Crown Zellerbach Building This beautiful and timeless fountain was made in 1959. It was a creation of artist David Tolerton. Tolerton was born in 1907 and died of natural causes at 93. His father came to the Bay area in 1915 and owned an art gallery on Sutter Street in…
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Woman in Bronze
Financial District One Bush Plaza Woman in Bronze Marcello Mascherini 1959 Marcello Mascherini was an Italian sculptor, born in Padua, who lived from 1906 to 1983. While an extremely famous sculptor in his time, little is written about him today. Marcello Mascherini was a prolific sculptor who made an impact on Italian art. Mascherini’s sculptures…
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One Bush Plaza and Its Environs
1 Bush Plaza Market Street Area One Bush Plaza, also known as the Crown Zellerbach Building, stands as a monument to International Style. International style is a phase of Modern architecture that began at the beginning of the 20th century, and continues as a dominant style in corporate and institutional structures in the 21st century.…
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Escalieta 1
SOMA Financial District 49 Stevenson Escalieta 1 by Manuel Neri – Marble – 1985 This is public art created by the 1% Public Art Program Manuel Neri (born April 12, 1930) is an American sculptor, painter, and printmaker and a notable member of the “second generation” of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Neri was born…
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Market Street’s Flatiron Building
Flat Iron Building 540 Market Street Market Street / Financial District Built in 1913 the Flatiron Building was designed by Havens & Toepke. It is one of the few, and most distinctive extant flatirons on Market Street. Flatirons were common north of Market both before and after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, but the destruction…
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Market Street Angel
720 Market Street Angel by Stephen de Staebler Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote this in 2002 “Several years ago a winged bronze figure by Bay Area’s sculptor Stephen de Staebler appeared without fanfare, nestled against a building facade on Market Street. Looking gnawed by time, as de Stabler’s figures typically do, it…
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Art at One Market Street
1 Market Street The Embarcadero San Francisco has many laws regarding open space and art work. This piece sits just inside the doors of 1 Market Street. Both pieces of this installation are available to view through the windows, or are available to see up close between 7:00 am and 6:30 pm. This installation is…