Willis Polk, The Other Man who Built San Francisco

From Frank Lloyd Wright to Philip Johnson, San Francisco has provided a canvas for architects to create from.  In a previous article I wrote about San Francisco's own Timothy Pfluger, the architect who designed many of the city's most famous structures.  Yet the equally influential Willis Polk also left his mark as one of the most innovative builders in history. In fact, some of his buildings were so groundbreaking, and firsts-of-their-kind, that architects the world over revere his style.

Willis Jefferson Polk was born in Jacksonville, Illinois on October 3, 1867. He came from a family of architects and draftsmen, so he was exposed to it at an early age.  While in his 20s, he first moved to Chicago to work for Daniel Burnham, designing the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in the windy city.  Having established his reputation early, another San Francisco architect, A. Page Brown (who was also a rock star in San Francisco architecture, and probably someone I will write about later) encouraged Willis to follow him out to San Francisco.

Once Polk moved here, he once again quickly established himself as a highly sought after designer.  Then, a few short years after he moved from Chicago two horrible and wonderful events happened.  The 1906 Earthquake and Fire leveled a third of San Francisco.

Chroniclers of the era say the bricks were still warm from the fire when the rebuilding began.  Polk either designed from scratch, or redesigned, scores of buildings destroyed or damaged by the earthquake, further establishing his bona fides.  Less than ten short years later, the city was rebuilt and ready to announce to the world, San Francisco is back!  

The Palace of Fine Arts

The other event that established Polk's reputation came less than a decade after the earthquake. The Panama Canal soon opened, cutting in half the time it took to sail from the east coast to the west.  To commemorate such an august occasion the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition opened in what was once marsh land. Ironically it was filled in with 1906 earthquake rubble, and would later become the Marina District.

Polk played a leading role in the planning of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition as the initial supervising architect, and one of his legacies from the fair is the only one left still standing.  None of those structures were built to last much longer than the fair itself but the Palace of Fine Arts, the large domed structure surrounded by a colonnade seen in countless commercials and movies, is still here today.

Willis Polk was also a relentless civic booster, supporting projects that benefited the city's citizens to the point where his forceful personality's reputation proceeded him.  But he was also an innovator.  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.

The Hallidie Building

Willis Polk has twelve buildings which were designated San Francisco Landmarks, some of which are: the Atkinson-Escher House, the Alvinza Hayward Building, the Beach Chalet, the Bourn Mansion, the Flood Mansion, the Gibbs House, the Hallidie Building, the Hobart Building, the Jessie Street Substation, the Mills Building, One Montgomery and the Tobin House. 

Full disclosure:  I once chose a dentist because he had an office in the Hobart Building, once the tallest building in San Francisco in its day.  I'm sure there were dentists closer to my home, but then I would not have had the pleasure of entering its quaint classic lobby.

After he died in September of 1924 his firm, Willis Polk & Co, with its dream team of architects, continued to design prominent buildings in San Francisco well into the late 1930s.