Tag: Architecture
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The Home Telephone Building
333 Grant Avenue Chinatown Union Square Ernest Albert Coxhead of Coxhead and Coxhead has given the city of San Francisco many of its finest buildings — one sits at 333 Grant Avenue, San Francisco landmark #141. The Home Telephone Company was San Francisco’s first telephone exchange site. The building, built in 1908 in the Mannerist…
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Islais: From Creek to Sewer to Creek
Islais Creek Bayview/Hunter’s Point It is known as Third and Army by skateboarders. Longshoreman call it Pier 84. Locals just think of it as Islais Creek. No matter its name, it is an area experiencing ongoing urban and environmental renewal. Islais Creek originally flowed for 3.5 miles from the hills of San Francisco into the…
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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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1360 Montgomery Street – A Streamline Moderne Dream
1360 Montgomery Street The Malloch Apartments Telegraph Hill The Spirit of California. Muralist Alfred Du Pont (also known as Dupont) was hired to design the images that grace the exterior 1360 Montgomery Street. Du Pont produced two 40-foot high silvery figures in sgraffito, or raised plaster, on the western facade of the building, and a third…
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San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers
100 JFK Boulevard Golden Gate Park The oldest extant structure in Golden Gate Park is also its most beloved: the Conservatory of Flowers. This beautiful, white-washed structure is the oldest wood-and-glass conservatory in America. It is believed that James Lick, a prominent and wealthy San Franciscan, purchased the conservatory as a kit from Ireland for $2050…
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The Art of the Jessie Street Substation
The Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Substation 222-226 Jessie Street Market Street/Yerba Buena Gardens Tucked away in a dead-end alley between Market and Mission, is one of San Francisco’s few great examples of the architectural possibilities of the brick facade. Originally built in 1881, and subsequently enlarged twice, the substation was damaged in a fire…
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Fort Point the Best Vantage Point to View the Golden Gate Bridge
It took 116 years for Fort Point to become a National Historic Site, and its life along that road was a bumpy one. Construction on Fort Point began in 1854. Thanks to the California Gold Rush, commerce was booming in San Francisco, and it was important that the portal through which valuable cargo flowed, the…
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San Francisco’s Civic Center the Heart of the City Beautiful Movement
San Francisco’s 1906 fire and earthquake not only destroyed much of San Francisco, it also destroyed the dream of many to bring the City Beautiful Movement to large sections of San Francisco. The City Beautiful Movement began with the “White City,” also known as the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. The Exposition took place in Chicago and…
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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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Chinatown Architecture
15 Waverly Place Chinatown – San Francisco The Marble plaque on this wall reads: Chinese Baptist Church Property of the American Baptist Home Mission Society of NY Built 1888 Destroyed 1906 Rebuilt 1908 When Chinese students were not permitted to attend the city’s public schools, the Church offered day school for children, and night school…
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Art Nouveau in Chinatown
720 Kearny Street Chinatown, San Francisco The first overseas office of the Sing Tao Daily was opened in San Francisco in 1975. The parent company of the Sing Tao Daily, the Sing Tao Newspaper Group Limited, was founded in 1938 and is based in Hong Kong. It has one of the longest publishing histories among…
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Oriental Home and School of San Francisco’s Chinatown
Chinatown 940 Washington Street, San Francisco I love the architecture that you find in Chinatown. I actually think, more because of the history than the actual styles. This brick building with its’ beautiful tile arched entry is one of my favorites. It is the Gum Moon Womens Residence. It has a nice piece of marble…
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Phone Company Building
743 Washington Street Chinatown San Francisco’s Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese community outside Asia. Established in the 1840s, It plays an extremely important part in the history of San Francisco and the history of the Chinese diaspora. Chinatown is the most densely populated neighborhood in the city and one…
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Mission Bay – Where did good architecture go?
Mission Bay What happened to architecture? This is not architecture, this is value engineering. These buildings were cliches before they were finished. No one is going to fly hundreds of miles to the great city of San Francisco and snap pictures of these monstrosities, unless of course they are urban planners. I would like to…
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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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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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Two Old Banks Still Stand Proud
Grant Avenue and Market Street Many critics of historical preservation projects complain that the process leaves the building frozen in time. Adaptive re-use proves that this does not need to be the case. Adaptive re-use, which adapts buildings for new uses while retaining their historic features, can also a sustainable form of development that reduces…
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IOOF Building at Mid-Market
26 7th Street Mid Market This is the second Independent Order of Odd Fellows Temple in San Francisco, the first was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. There is a wonderful history of the past temples with great photographs at my friend Mark’s site. Check out the old photos here. The Independent Order of…
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UN Plaza Fountain
UN Plaza Civic Center There is more to the U.N. Plaza fountain than meets the eye, however, typical of the City of San Francisco it took three redesigns, one public vote and a lot of back and forth (much of it ridiculous), to finally get the thing built. The fountain was designed by landscape architect…
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The Faces of 50 UN Plaza
50 UN Plaza City Center The Federal Building of San Francisco was vacated by the US Government in 2007 when they built a newer building in Civic Center. It has recently undergone a $121 million restoration and will be the offices of Section 9 GSA. This article is about the exterior of the building. In 1927, the…
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Boats on the Bay – Pier 14
Pier 14 The Embarcadero Titled “Boats on the Bay,” the project was designed and created by students of the Build San Francisco Institute . These simplistically drawn, colored tiles depict tugboats, cruise liners, and military ships. The Architectural Foundation of San Francisco has created the Build San Francisco Institute, a half day high school program…
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Levi Plaza Brings the Sierras to San Francisco
1155 Battery The Embarcadero In 1982, the Haas family (heirs to Levi Strauss) were looking to build a new corporate campus for the Levi Corporation. They called upon Lawrence Halprin to design the plaza for the campus. While prolific, Halprin is best known for Sea Ranch in California and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C. Sometimes referred to as…