Frozen Music - San Francisco Architecture

Everyone knows famous architects like Mike Brady and Howard Roark designed many buildings in San Francisco.   Stop anyone on the street in this city, and just about every citizen will sing their praises as local civic heroes. 

Of course none of this is true as these are fictional characters, but most people don't know the difference between them and a Phillip Johnson or a Julia Morgan, who are real architects. If you have a love of architecture as I do then Goethe’s characterization of architecture as, "frozen music," is an fitting description.

In fact, San Francisco has been an innovator in architectural styles and engineering since the day Spanish explorers set the first adobe cornerstone in 1776.

Victorian architecture is the style most synonymous with the city.  At first glance, most people wouldn't know a New York Brownstone from a London Townhouse.  But flash a picture of a San Francisco Victorian home, and even the most uninformed person would easily recognize it as being from San Francisco.  At the time the city was founded in 1850, it was a ramshackle of wooden shanties.  Some historians believe it wasn't until 1854, with the building of Old St. Mary's Cathedral in the Gothic Revival tradition, did the significance of architectural integrity get established.

 Old St. Mary's Cathedral

As the Gold Rush subsided and the city's middle class developed, the desire to impress a symbol of civility on an otherwise newly established frontier town manifested itself in many ways.   In mid-19th century San Francisco, the Victorian English style was the standard for being upwardly mobile.  If you were part of the new middle-class, moving beyond the center of the city, you wanted to make sure the home you moved into met the current aesthetic.  Italianate and Queen Anne were also popular styles homes were built in, but the Victorian home became synonymous with San Francisco.

As the city was growing by leaps and bounds after the Gold Rush, brick factories were few and far between, but Redwood trees were plentiful and that became the predominant building material.

In 1906 San Francisco had a little earthquake and fire that destroyed a third of the city, but like a Phoenix rising from the ashes (the city's official symbol, by the way), a great template of innovative possibilities presented itself to architects and designers as the city had to rebuild.  It is said that the bricks of the destroyed buildings were still warm when there were recovered and recycled for new construction.  

The Hallidie Building

One of those innovations was mind-blowing in its day but is something no one even notices in the 21st century.  If you have ever seen a building with a reflective glass exterior (or Curtain-Wall glass), it owes its existence to Willis Polk's Hallidie Building.  Built in 1918, the Hallidie Building was so groundbreaking that its slick exterior has been appropriated by everything from the United Nations building to Trump Tower.  So important is it, that the American Institute of Architects has its San Francisco headquarters there.

Builders and dreamers saw a grand opportunity to employ the newest architectural styles and the latest technologies.  In the two decades following the 1906 Earthquake, many of San Francisco’s most iconic buildings were erected.  Our world-famous city hall, the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum (celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year), and the San Francisco Examiner building, redesigned by none other than Julia Morgan. 

The Julia Morgan-redesigned San Francisco Examiner building.

Julia Morgan designed hundreds of buildings, many around the San Francisco bay area.  The Chinatown YMCA or Berkeley City Club may not resonate with you, but her most famous work is not even near the city.  Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, rests the little town of San Simion along Highway One.  This is where newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst built his grand palace known today as Hearst Castle, and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the state.

In the 1920s the Art Deco style was popular in architecture as well as in fashion and ephemera, and San Francisco has fine examples of the style.  One of my favorites is the Mayan-themed 450 Sutter Street building, designed by Timothy L. Pflueger.  I have always been fascinated with architecture since I was a little kid.  It probably comes from watching Godzilla movies and reading Spider-Man comic books. I had a dentist in there, and when I crossed the building’s threshold and saw the lobby for the first time, my jaw hit the ground.  I made a mental note on learning more about who designed it.

The Mayan-themed Art Deco 450 Sutter St.

Although many architects built in the Art Deco style, San Francisco-native Timothy L. Pflueger designed some of the most iconic Art-Deco buildings in the city.  He was so engaged in the city’s art and design scene, that he even appears prominently in one of Diego Rivera’s billboard-sized murals.

Probably the most ambitious architectural and engineering endeavor is the city's most famous structure.  They said it couldn't be crossed, but Golden Gate Bridge chief engineer Joseph Strauss begged to differ.  In an impressively short amount of time, the Golden Gate Bridge, and its lesser-known brother the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge were both built at the same time, in just four years. 

Comparatively speaking, when the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, it took almost two decades to complete just half of what it took to build in just a few years.

That’s right I said two decades.

As the Art-Deco style of the 1920s and 1930s gave way to the boxier International style of architecture, pioneered by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, San Francisco was again on the forefront of forward-looking styles. I doubt anyone would reject the notion that the most high-profile building of the post-war era is the Transamerica Pyramid.   When its design was released to the public (and up until the day it opened in 1972) it was fought, decried, and bemoaned in the most vociferous way possible. 

The Transamerica Pyramid

Yet today, it is beloved as much as the Golden Gate Bridge and the cable car, and cemented in pop-culture.  Even James Bond had a rather painful interaction with the Transamerica Pyramid.  If you show a silhouette of any skyscraper, with the exception of the Empire State or Chrysler Buildings, the Transamerica Pyramid is most recognized.

The latest jewel in San Francisco’s skyscraper crown is now the city’s tallest.  In fact, the Salesforce Tower is the tallest building west of Chicago. 

The Salesforce Tower

When it was conceived, it was part of a larger plan to build it atop of a state-of-the-art transit center.  It is planned to be the Grand Central Station of the west coast and has already built the infrastructure to house the northern terminal of California’s (and America’s) first high-speed train line.

From the days of the Spanish explorers laying that first cornerstone, to the anticipation of high-speed rail, San Francisco is once again on the forefront of the latest architectural and engineering designs for the 21st. century.