San Francisco architecture is the result of a blend of various challenging factors that include geography, topology, and it’s stormy history. San Francisco is known for its very hilly topography radiating from the center of the town with few hills on its edges. The city is known for its eclectic various architectural styles, however, in a 2012 study it was determined by an AI algorithm of 25,000 random samples from google street view that the city is a blend of Victorian and Modern Architecture with bay windows being a core characteristic. In this article, the beauty and design of places to visit in San Francisco will be highlighted following the eclectic mix that is the architectural landscape.
Brutalism | Places To Visit In San Francisco
Transamerica Pyramid.
Architect: William Pereira & Assoc.
Year of completion: 1972
Renovation: Foster + Partners, SHVO
Style: Futuristic, Brutalist
Building type: Office Space, Accommodation
Material: Concrete
Location: Redwood Park
From 1972 up until 2018 the Transamerica Pyramid was the tallest building in San Francisco with 48 floors standing at 853 feet tall. Its unconventional shape was a suggestion made by the then CEO, John Beckett to allow as much sunshine to reach the streets. The building is a four-sided Pyramid with two protrusions on both sides that house the lift Shafts.
The building’s exterior is made of white quartz with over 3000 windows. The top of the tower is an illuminated spire of steel that stands at 65 meters enclosed are four cameras directed outward with a virtual deck below that gives the curious residence a look out into the city. When the building was built the inhabitant of the city were in disagreement and claimed it was an eyesore in an area that was once populated by artists and free thinkers.
Queen Anne–style
Haas-Lilienthal House
Architect: Peter R. Schmidt
Year of completion: 1886
Renovation: Foster + Partners, SHVO
Style: Queen Anne–style
Building type: Office Space, Accommodation
Material: Redwood
Location: 2007 Franklin Street
The house is a San Francisco landmark. It is the only remaining intact Victorian House despite surviving an Earthquake and resulting fire in 1906 that destroyed about 40% of the city of San Francisco. It is currently open to the public as a museum complete with furniture from the same period.
Three generations of the descendants of Haas-Lilienthal lived at the house for years. The house was later donated to the San Francisco Architectural Heritage Foundation. The house is built following the Victorian Queen-Anne style. The lots in the area are long and narrow and the building style enabled the designers to maximize the space. The residential houses in San Francisco are crammed tight in a row following the city’s original plan. The City was laid out in a grid system with the lots allocated to the houses being as little as 25 feet wide. When the city was first divided the population was about 500 people. As the plots were being auctioned off in the 1840’s the gold rush happened and suddenly the rolling hills were not enough for the surge in population. The plots were then subdivided further to meet the demand.
The Victorian Houses give the city its character and identity despite not being the only city with said architecture. This style of architecture originated in England during Queen Victoria’s reign. These houses are characterized by being three stories, single-story porches wrapping around the house, asymmetrical form, and steep roofs and brightly painted.
San Francisco was one of the first cities to embrace this type of architecture designed to look like the row houses in London which were further aided by the availability of redwood in the area which is easy to manipulate due to its softness.
Renaissance Revival | Places To Visit In San Francisco
Palace Hotel
Architect: Trowbridge and Livingston
Year of completion: December 19, 1909
Renovation: 1909
Style: Beaux Arts, Renaissance Revival
Building type: Hotel
Material: Concrete
Location: Southwest corner of Market and New Montgomery streets
The hotel is a part of the Historic Hotels of America surviving as the city’s oldest hotel. The hotel was once the largest luxury hotel in the world playing host to many events in history including the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The original hotel suffered severe damage during the great San Francisco fire. The renovations were done and the building re-opened in 1909. The hotel was advertised for its luxury and sheer scale and at the time offered individual fireplaces in each one of its 775 rooms and was one of the first ever to offer air conditioning. The hotel has at different points in time housed the who and who of the day from artists to various presidents.
Gothic Revival
Grace Cathedral
Architect: George Bodley, Lewis P. Hobart
Year of completion: 1964
Renovation: 1991
Style: French Gothic Revival
Building type: Church
Material: Ferroconcrete
Location: 1100 California Street
The current cathedral began construction after the first parish was razed down in the fire of 1906 forcing the parishioners into a temporary structure till the commencement of the Grace Cathedral in 1926 to 1964. This delay was attributed to the great depression that swept through the country the congregants were therefore unable to raise the required funds to restore the building. The Cathedral is reminiscent of the same in Amiens, Paris, Beauvais, and Chartres. The cathedral features extensive work by Jan Henryk De Rosen which included murals and various cast doors.
Beaux-Arts | Places To Visit In San Francisco
Palace of Fine Arts
Architect: William Gladstone Merchant; Bernard Maybeck
Year of completion: 1915
Renovation: 1964 -1974
Style: Beaux-arts
Building type: Museum
Material: Concrete
Location: 3301 Lyon St.
The Palace of fine arts was built as part of the Panama- Pacific International Exposition in 1915 and is the only project that was maintained onsite total date. It is now used as an event space hosting weddings and trade fairs. The site is designed around a rotunda standing tall overlooking the surrounding lagoons. Beaux- Arts is influenced by classical Roman and Greek forms dominant in the U.S. Many architects trained in Paris after the devastation of the world war where they were exposed to this style of architecture. Some defining features of this style of Architecture are its focus on symmetry, highly decorated facades and interiors, and the use of stone and similar materials.
Mission Revival
Castro Theatre
Architect: Timothy L. Pflueger
Year of completion: 1922
Style: Mission Revival
Building type: Theatre
Material: Concrete
Location: 429 Castro Street
The theatre was first opened as a private theatre, owned by the Nasser brothers who own various theatres around the San Francisco area. The theatre is associated with movie showings of films that were considered controversial in their time. Through these events, the theatres played host to various marginalized groups in a time when censorship was the norm.
The theatre was registered as a city Landmark in 1977. The mission revival style is characterized by borrowing of various elements from the Spanish style. The Castro Theatre is reminiscent of a Mexican cathedral. The theatre has been the center of many art festivals such as the Arab Film Festival, Cinema Italia, and Doc Stories.
Art Deco
New Mission Theatre
Architect: Reid Brothers
Year of completion: 1916
Renovation: 2015
Style: Art Deco
Building type: Theatre
Material: Concrete
Location: 2550 Mission Street
The building was originally designed by the Reid Brothers and was later renovated for the Nasser Brothers into the Art Deco style of architecture. The theatre was saved from demolition in 1993 by a group that lobbied for its preservation. The Alamo Draft house cinema renovated the theatre and re-opened it in 2015. The Art Deco Style is characterized by rich colors, bold geometry, and detailed facades.
Streamline Modern | Places To Visit In San Francisco
Malloch Building
Architect: Irvin Goldstine
Year of completion:1937
Renovation: 2015
Style: Streamline Moderne
Building type: Accommodation
Material: Concrete
Location: 1360 Montgomery Street
This type of architecture is also known as the ocean liner house for the appearance reminisce of ocean liners on the horizon. The house was designed for John Malloch and his son and served as office space for their architecture firm. The building offers magnificent views of the area from a high vantage point and the multiple apartments create an alternative source of income.
DuPont, a famed muralist was hired to design images that decorated the interior of the complex. The building has been the site of several films.
Chinatown
Sing Chong
Architect: Ross and Burgren
Year of completion: 1937
Style: Classical Chinese
Building type: Commerce
Material: Concrete
Location: 1360 Montgomery Street
The building was one of the first structures that came up after the great fire in 1906 inspired by classical Chinese Architecture. San Francisco was the entry point for Chinese Immigrants in the 11840s After the fire , the Local Chinese pulled together in a team effort to rebuild the city.
Modernist | Places To Visit In San Francisco
St. Mary’s Cathedral
Architect: Pietro Belluschi and Pier Luigi Nervi
Year of completion: 1971
Style: Tudor Revival
Building type: Church
Material: Concrete
Location: 111 Gough St, San Francisco, CA
The top of the cathedral is designed to resemble a church from the sky also known as Our Lady of Maytag. The building was a pioneer of architecture at the time, the architects used what was considered revolutionary methods at the time. The building attracts all sorts of religious benefits and architectural appreciation. The design of the interior directs the eye upwards through the use of the blue stained glass that leads the eyes upwards to the cross on the ceiling leading streams of light into the church.
Postmodern
SFMOMA,
Architect: Pietro Belluschi and Pier Luigi Nervi
Year of completion: 1995
Renovation: 2015
Style: Post-modernism
Building type: Museum
Material: Concrete
Location: South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood
The Museum was designed by the Swiss-Italian architect Mario Botta. This was his first construction in the US and as such came with its concerns. He aimed to compliment the site that was home to some dilapidated buildings. The building is the largest museum second only to New York‘s Museum of Modern Art. The building had to be an icon to meet the standards of artistic appreciation.
Five stories high and clad in red brick of various treatments shooting out of its core is a black and white cylinder that is sliced off at a single covered in glass. This oculus sheds natural light in the interior and faces the city that it stands in solid and unwavering.
In 2016 a 110-story addition came up designed and executed by Snohetta, this structure doubled the exhibition space of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The development encouraged development in the area and soon developers took an interest in the environment and buildings came shooting up. Buildings that are identified as those f the post-modernist movement employ great playfulness and the use of classical motifs.
Contemporary | Places To Visit In San Francisco
M.H. de Young Museum
Architect: Herzog & de Meuron
Year of completion: 2005
Renovation: 2015
Style: Post-modernism
Building type: Museum
Material: Concrete
Location: 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive in Golden Gate Park
The current museum is a revival of the original structure that was a part of the Midwinter Internation Exposition of 1894. The older structure suffered from neglect and became a hazard to its environment as concrete decorative elements on its façade detached and fell below causing harm. The building suffered irreparable damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The new design proposed by Herzog & de Meuron saw the replacement of the previous museum with a new and revolutionary design.
The design saw to it that the original vegetation on site was preserved and incorporated as part of the landscape in the site. The main mass of the building is low-lying and undulating following the terrain and at one end tall twisted tower projects into the sky almost as if reaching into the heavens from the earth. Following the heavily vegetated site the building is clad in copper panels which with oxidation change color and adopt a greenish hue that with age recedes the building into its environment and the porous nature of the façade is emulative of the sun piercing through the tree line reaching for the ground.
Brick Warehouses
Trinidad Bean and Elevator Company building
Architect: Trinidad Bean & Elevator Company
Year of completion: 1855
Style: Brick Warehousing
Building type: Office
Material: Brick
Location: 855 Front Street at Vallejo Street
This brick warehouse paired with the Pelican Paper Company Building is registered as one of San Francisco’s landmarks in the National Register. The buildings are among the view that survived the earthquake and fire of 1906 and were birthed as a port and industrial center in the early days.
International Style
Crown Zellerbach Building
Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Year of completion: 1959
Style: inInternationaltyle
Building type: Office
Material: Glass, Concrete
Location: Bush Street and Battery Street at Market Street in the Financial District
The building was among the first to boast curtain walls designed in the international style with an open-plan floor design. Constructed using steel, glass, and concrete. Attached to the building is a solid addition of the same height fully encased in concrete and housing building services. The 20-floor building is considered one of the major accomplishments in construction in the city after the great depression saw development grind to a halt.
Mid-Century Architecture | Places To Visit In San Francisco
Scottish Rite Masonic Center
Architect: Albert F. Roller
Year of completion: 1959
Style: Mid-Century Architecture
Building type: Office
Material: Glass, Concrete
Location: Bush Street and Battery Street at Market Street in the Financial District
The Freemasons are among the oldest organizations involved in building crafts and apprenticeships. The building is open to the public for viewing and also with a seven-hundred-seater hall that hosts events for the community. The building is visited by Masons and also non-masons to appreciate the craft and care taken to execute the building’s façade and interior by artist and architect Millard Sheets who designed the building’s exterior mosaics, a double-eagle medallion, interior murals, paintings, and wood carvings.
The community is known for its outreach programs which are hosted at the facility. Policemen and firemen are hosted in the halls of the building to integrate into the community and support their efforts in the protection and development of the community.
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