Ahead of its time
Hidden in the recesses of downtown, one can find an urban San Francisco that turns away from the grandeur of the California landscape and embraces the architectural ethos of an older metropolis. Call it the city’s New Yorkishness, or its Chicagoisms, but from the shadowed blocks below the skyscrapers, the angles of stone and glass evoke a different aesthetic. Commerce, profit, and above all, the glorious future, are expressed in this architecture. And just as Chicago had Louis Sullivan, San Francisco had Willis Polk. Polk left dozens of distinctive buildings in the city, but none as influential with regard to the look of American cities in the last 100 years as the Hallidie building.
When it was built in 1917, the building was one of the first in the world to use glass curtain-wall construction, wherein the exterior glass wall attached directly to the structural steel framework. This innovation became the basis for the modern skyscraper. Although small by current standards, the seven-story Hallidie Building shines like the gem that it is. The façade has been restored, along with the contrasting Gothic grillwork and balconies. The transparency of the design, intended to bring space and light into the workplace, is intensely obvious here, as one seems to be looking through a huge window into a vast interior world. Currently, the space quite appropriately houses the offices of the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Info
Address 130 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA, 94104 | Public Transport Bus: 2 (Post St & Montgomery St stop); 3 (Sansome St & Sutter St stop); 30, 45 (Stockton St & Sutter St stop) | Tip Just a block away you’ll find the Crown Zellerbach Building, at One Bush Plaza, San Francisco’s first glass curtain-wall tower in the International Style, built just one year after Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson perfected the style in their Seagram Building on Park Avenue in New York City.
Named for the cable-car pioneer Andre Hallidie, the building is now privately owned, though it originally belonged to the University of California; the blue and gold of the steel trim are the school’s colors. There’s a US Post Office branch on the ground floor, so it’s easy to step inside to get a feel for the interior. The best way to get an overall view, however, is from the upper levels of the Crocker Galleria directly across the street.
Back
To the online map