Search Results for “pflueger” – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

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WPA Map of San Francisco

Posted by Cindy on February 25, 2019

Feb 252019

January to May 2019
At San Francisco’s Public Libraries

This exhibit is something after my own heart. A WPA map of San Francisco combines my love of the projects that stemmed from the WPA and the history of San Francisco. This exhibit is called Take Part and more information about the locations of the parts of the map can be found here.

Coit Tower and its surroundings. This section is in the North Beach or Chinatown Branch Library depending on the date you visit.

The model is a detailed wooden replica of the city of San Francisco at a scale of one inch to one hundred feet. It was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the late 1930s, under the New Deal. It shows San Francisco from San Bruno Mountain to Yerba Buena Island to the Presidio.

The original project was the brainchild of San Francisco architect Timothy Pflueger with City Planning Commission sponsoring it. Plans were drawn using aerial photographs and surveys. It was constructed in an unidentified church and took 300 craftspeople two years to build at a cost of $102,750.

Parts of the South of Market area at the Main Branch of the SF Public Library

There is little known about the historical timeline of the map. The completed model was displayed just once, intact, in the Light Court at City Hall. Then World War II broke out and the Light Court became a war room, so the map was taken apart and put in crates.

It eventually found its way to the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. The model was used as an urban planning tool by the students, and when one examines their neighborhood closely one can see that at times, the map was updated by students and professors at UC. I found several buildings that were from the 1960s.

The area showing City Hall and its environs in the Main Library of the SF Public Library

Eventually, it again saw the light of day when a curator of SFMOMA, who knew of its existence decided to do an educational outreach program called Public Knowledge. That program involved both SFMOMA and the San Francisco public library.

The map fits together like building blocks. There are 6000 of these city blocks.

There are some pieces missing, and the group sponsoring this event are hoping people that may know of their whereabouts will come forward with them. Even without the missing pieces, the map is considered to be the largest and most intact of any of a number of city models built across America by the WPA.

The North Beach area found at the North Beach Branch or the Chinatown Branch, depending on the month.

Take Part is a collaboration between Dutch, Rotterdam based artists Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van der Pol, and SFMOMA. Working globally in a variety of forms including performance, publications, videos and public projects, the artists explore how “publics” are formed and come together. Several of their projects deal with archives and collections, while others are about particular places and local histories.

Not all the pieces are on display but the ones that are, can be found in branch libraries across the city. However, I recommend you start on the 6th floor of the Main Library as there is an explanation of the map, with historic photos, then venture out to explore the neighborhoods. The project runs through March, after that, it is hoped a home can be found for the entire model.

North Beach Area found in either the North Beach Branch Library or Chinatown Branch Library

I will be visiting all the libraries over the next two months and adding photos as I do, so please come back and take a look.

The Mission Bay Library is so small there was only room for the piers that surround the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street

A small piece that is on display at the Mission Bay Branch Library

A composite image of the entire map can be found at David Rumsey’s website here.

Here is a link to the aerial photos used for the project, again at the incredible David Rumsey Map Collection.

Continue reading about map sections in other libraries.

Dudley Carter the GGIE and CCSF

Posted by Cindy on August 7, 2018

Aug 072018

CCSF Campus
Phelan Avenue
Diego Rivera Theater and Conlan Hall

During the second season (1940) of the Golden Gate International Exposition, organizers began the Art in Action program in the Hall of Fine and Decorative Arts. During the 1939 season, the hall had housed the art collections of European and Pacific cultures. The concept was a working art exhibit in which artists of many media, including sculptors, painters, muralists, weavers, stained glass artists, printmakers, potters, and engravers were invited to move their studios into the Hall and create their art while the public watched.

Artists included sculptor Ruth Cravath, mosaic artist Herman Volz, sculptor Frederick Law Olmsted, etchings artist Elizabeth Ginno Winkler, muralist Diego Rivera, and wood carver Dudley C. Carter.

A view of the Hall of Decorative and Fine Arts from the San Francisco Bay. The building served as the Palace of Fine and Decorative Arts during the GGIE and was constructed to serve as one of two hangar buildings built for the San Francisco airport that was planned for the island. (Library of Congress)

This is when Dudley Carter created The Ram. The sculpture, a bighorn mountain ram, was carved in just 30 days from a single redwood log using primitive instruments such as a wood axe.

At the conclusion of the fair, the college architect, Timothy Pfleuger, presented The Ram to Archibald J. Cloud, president emeritus of the college. It was to serve as the symbol of the college mascot.

Timothy Pfleuger was on the GGIE committee, it was his idea for the Art in Action project, and due to his also being the college architect, much of the finished art from Art in Action was always slated to end up at what was then San Francisco Junior College and after the war became City College of San Francisco (CCSF).

For five years The Ram was stored in the men’s gymnasium because of the absence of a place considered appropriate for it. With the acquisition of the west campus The Ram was placed outside, periodically changing locations, and from time to time students would paint it in the campus colors of red and white. Sometimes rival schools would repaint The Ram in their own school colors. In spring of 1983, The Ram was restored by Carter (who was by then 90 years old) with the use of a pickaxe and its original, natural redwood.

The Ram by Dudley C. Carver was originally carved at the GGIE and now stands in Conlan Hall at CCSF

The Goddess of the Forest is another redwood sculpture created by Carter during the GGIE. It was originally 26 feet tall, and had a girth at the base of 21 feet, for many years this piece was located in Golden Gate Park. The sculpture suffered extensive water damage to the lower half before being restored by CCSF Art Department instructor Roger Baird in 1992. It is now only 15 feet tall and stands facing the Diego Rivera mural in the Diego Rivera Theater.

It almost did not make it to CCSF. Difficulties arose in regards to paying for the statue’s move from Golden Gate Park when, then CCSF President Carlos B.Ramirez, decided that the estimated $8,000 moving fee was too high.

The actual moving fee was $3,000 and eventually paid for out of the Student Union’s budget.

Goddess of the Forest originally carved by Dudley C. Carter for the GGIE now stands in the Diego Rivera Theater of CCSF

Goddess of the Forest originally carved by Dudley C. Carter at the GGIE now stands in the Diego Rivera Theater of CCSF

Diego Rivera worked directly across from Carter at the Golden Gate International Exposition and they became friends. Rivera said the following about Carter, “Here in the Fine Arts Building there is a man carving wood. This man was an engineer, an educated and sophisticated man. He lived with the Indians and then he became an artist, and his art for [a while] was like Indian art—only not the same, but a great deal of Indian feeling had passed into him and it came out in his art. Now, what he carves is not Indian anymore, but his own expression—and his own expression now has in it what he has felt and that is right, that is the way art should be. First, the assimilation and then the expression, only why do the artists of this continent think that they should always assimilate the art of Europe. They should go to the other Americans for their enrichment because if they copy Europe it will always be something they cannot feel because after all, they are not Europeans.”

Carter shows up in Rivera’s mural that, while originally painted at the GGIE, was always slated for CCSF.

Dudley Carver depicted in Diego Rivera's mural carving The Ram

Dudley Carter depicted in Diego Rivera’s mural carving The Ram

The third sculpture by Carter is also in Conlan Hall in the first-floor hallway. This is titled The Beast.

The Beast was actually sculpted by Dudley Carter at Porter College at the University of California in Santa Cruz in 1983. The piece was given to City College by Carter on the urging of the then college president, Carlos Ramirez.

Beast by Dudley C. Carter

Born in New Westminister, Canada on May 6, 1898, Dudley Carter was the son of a woodsman. He was six years old when he began helping out in his father’s lumber camp.

Raised among the totem-carving Kwaquit and Tlingit tribes, he took part in their ceremonies. About 1929, he moved to Seattle where he had art lessons at the Cornish School and studied sculpture at the Art Institute.

Moving to California in the mid-1930s, he lived in San Francisco and worked for the Federal Art Project. He later lived in Carmel where he built houses out of trees that he felled himself. He died in 1992 in Bellevue, Washington.

Carter working on The Ram during the GGIE surrounded by wood chips (Bancroft Library)

Carver standing with one of his axes in front of his likeness in the Diego Rivera Mural

Carter standing with one of his axes in front of his likeness in the Diego Rivera Mural (Bancroft Library)

Goddess of the Forest in Golden Gate Park 1951 (SFPL) – Notice the lower portion of the goddess’s legs are still intact. The sculpture now ends just below the feet of the small animal at her knees.

Castro District History

Posted by Cindy on May 12, 2015

May 122015

Castro Street

The Castro Street Design Project was a street improvement project by the City of San Francisco that improved the cable car turn around at Market Street and Castro Street between Market and 19th. This included the fabulous rainbow cross walk you see above and historic markers placed in the sidewalk up and down Castro Street on both sides of the street for those two blocks.

The native Yelamu people lived nearby in the village of Chutchul relocating each winter to the bayside village of Sitlintac. A creek flows past grassland and chaparral toward the bay along the path of today’s 18th street.

American settler John Hohner purchases a portion of Rancho San Miguel, Castro Street, named after a prominent Mexican Era Californio Family, makes the western border of the nascent neighborhood known as Horner’s addition.

Thousands attend the first known festival on Castro Street to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Twin Peaks Tunnel. The San Francisco Chronicle declares the celebration “A riot of hilarity and merrymaking.”. The tunnel opens in 1918.

The Nasser Brothers open the Castro Theater. The first movie palace designed by Prominent architect Timothy Pflueger. An early usherette at the theatre, Janet Gaynor, goes on to win best actress at the Academy Awards in 1929.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, A queer activist and charity group founded in 1979, organize one of the world’s first AIDS related fundraisers, a dog show on Castro Street. Local resident and disco star Sylvester is one of the judges.

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence

National attention turns to the Castro as thousands gather to celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriages in California, marking a milestone in the neighborhood’s historic role as a center for LGBT rights.

There are many more plaques along the sidewalks, all part of the City’s improvement program.

An Ode to the Automobile

Posted by Cindy on July 7, 2014

Jul 072014

Mason and O’Farrell Streets
Union Square

The construction of the Downtown Center Garage, now the Mason O’Farrell Garage, harkens back to when the automobile was king.

San Francisco now has a Transit First Policy which specifically gives priority to public transit and other alternatives to the private automobile as the means of meeting San Francisco’s transportation needs. Essentially this means that this garage would never have been built in today’s times.

Built in 1953, and situated between Union Square and the then vital theater district, is was meant to augment the Union Square Parking Garage and contained 1,200 parking stalls.

The Downtown Center Garage is nine-levels and constructed of reinforced-concrete. Pairs of circular, spiral ramps extend up from the basement to the roof at the southeast corner of the building. The concrete slabs and walls bear the impressions of plywood board forms and the columns of the Sono-tube forms used to create them. The circular ramps are expressed on the exterior of the building as curved and slightly inclined slabs that spiral upward, helix-like, toward the roof. Thin, tubular steel railings wrap around the perimeter of the slabs, providing protection to users as well as a modern decorative motif.

The structure, featured in the 1955 Architect and Engineer was designed by George Applegarth (1875-1972).

Applegarth, born in Oakland, was a student of Bernard Maybeck, who encouraged him to train at the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts.

Applegarth’s most famous works were under the commission of Alma de Bretteville Spreckles. He designed both the Spreckles Mansion and the Palace of the Legion of Honor for Alma.

In 1921 and 1922, Applegarth was President of the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. During the 1920’s he had begun to make plans for the parking garage that now stands under Union Square, the project was eventually given to Timothy Pflueger and not completed until 1942. In 1952, he started researching double-spiral ramp, multi-story, self-parking structures which gave us one of his last major projects in San Francisco, the Downtown Center Garage.

A shot from the 1955 Architect and Engineer. Notice the lack of safety equipment.

From the 1955 Architect and Engineer Magazine

The shopping strip along the exterior of the building was added sometime in the 1980’s.

Judge James Seawell

Posted by Cindy on February 11, 2014

Feb 112014

Second Floor
City Hall
Civic Center

The San Francisco Call ran this article on November 8, 1898:

Judge James M. Seawell.

No better nomination has been made by any party than that of Judge James M. Seawell, one of the Democratic candidates for Superior Judge. During the six years he has served in that capacity he has built up a reputation as a jurist that he may justly feel proud of. He has shown conspicuous ability, has ever presided with dignity and has been honest and conscientious in his interpretation of the law. It can be truly said that his services have helped to elevate the bench of San Francisco and gain for it the confidence and respect of the people. Judge Seaweil was born in 1536 at Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, where his father, who was at the time a captain in the regular army, was then stationed. The Judge graduated at Harvard College In 1855. and at the law school of Louisville, Ky., in 1857. He came to this city in 1861 and has resided here ever since. He was elected to the Superior bench in 1892, and his candidacy for re-election is most favorably received because of his eminent fitness for the position.

The artist of this bust was Ralph Stackpole. Stackpole is responsible for many statues throughout San Francisco that you can see here.

Ralph Ward Stackpole (May 1, 1885 – December 13, 1973) was an American sculptor, painter, muralist, etcher and art educator, San Francisco’s leading artist during the 1920s and 1930s. Stackpole was involved in the art and causes of social realism, especially during the Great Depression, when he was part of the Federal Art Project for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Stackpole was responsible for recommending that architect Timothy L. Pflueger bring Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to San Francisco to work on the San Francisco Stock Exchange and its attached office tower in 1930–31.

The statue was a gift of the SF Bar Association.

The Royal Theater – Another Lost Gem

Posted by Cindy on November 5, 2013

Nov 052013

1529 Polk Street
Nob Hill

The Royal Theatre was built in 1916 and began its life as a Nickelodeon. Originally designed by the Reid Brothers for the same family that owned two other theaters in San Francisco, the Castro and the Alhambra. It was completely remodeled by Timothy Pflueger during the mid-1930’s for the Nasser Brothers chain which operated it at the time.

The theater contained 1515 seats when it opened.

As time passed Polk Street became run-down, but still the theater’s vertical sign was a local landmark. The same decorative motif found on the front also gracefully decorated the organ grilles.

The Royal Theatre was demolished in June of 2003 except for the facade and a few of the architectural elements, which were incorporated into the six-storied housing unit constructed on the site.

Two of San Francisco’s most prominent architects, James William Reid (1851-1943) and his brother Merritt J. Reid (1855-1932), created a number of San Francisco landmarks during the “City Beautiful” period.

In 1886, the founders of the Coronado Beach Company invited the Reid Brothers to San Diego to design the Hotel Del Coronado. When it opened in 1888, it was the largest resort hotel in the world and the first to use electrical lighting. One year later John D. Spreckels, who was investing heavily in San Diego, bought a one-third interest in the company. Spreckels eventually took over as owner of the hotel when the builders were unable to repay a loan to him. The ‘Del’, as it is affectionately known, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and further designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977.

In 1889, both James and Merritt were made Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. That year Merritt opened an office in San Francisco. He was later joined by James.

From their San Francisco office, in 1892, the Reid Brothers designed the first steel-frame building west of Chicago, for the Portland Oregonian newspaper.

The Reid Brothers became known for their Classical Revival mansions. The Reid Brothers essentially became the Spreckels family architects, designing several mansions for them. The firm designed the Spreckels Car House at 2301 San Jose (1899-1901), known today as the Geneva Car Barn and now San Francisco Landmark #180.

The Reid Brothers are perhaps best known for many classic movie theaters, including the Coliseum Theater (745 Clement, 1918), the Alexandria Theater (5400 Geary, 1923), the Metropolitan (2055 Union, 1924), the Balboa Theatre (3630 Balboa Street, 1926), the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (1926), the Fox in Redwood City, and Golden State Theatre in Monterey (1926).

The Reid brothers worked in San Francisco until 1932, when Merritt Reid died and James, a founder of the San Francisco Opera Company, turned full-time to his hobbies of oil painting and music.

Timothy Pflueger has appeared in this site before. He is responsible for the designs that you see in these photographs.

The First National Bank Building

Posted by Cindy on June 24, 2013

Jun 242013

1 Montgomery Street
Financial District

This classic Italian Renaissance bank building was designed by Willis Polk in 1908. Polk has been in this website many times. The Raymond granite entryway is only the tease to a beautiful and highly ornamented interior, replete with a carved white marble staircase; counters and benches of carved marble along with bronze tellers’ windows, and hardware.

Originally the Crocker-Citizens National Bank (absorbed by Wells Fargo in the 1980’s), the building has been extensively remodeled. It originally housed an 11 story office tower above it and was sheathed in terra cotta.

One of its more outstanding features is the rotunda entrance supported by granite pillars, with its coffered ceiling.

Originally a “combination bank and office building” it is now one of the most lavish banking interiors in the city. In 1921 the banking hall and its arcaded base were extended to the north in an exact copy of the original design. This extension made a grand interior even grander but it incurred an interesting reaction from Polk who sued the architect, Charles E. Gottschalk, for plagiarism.

By 1960 the sandstone façade was crumbling. So Milton Pflueger, whose brother Timothy was the city’s most influential architect in the 1930’s and 1940s, redesigned the façade for the upper floors. When Crocker proposed a new world headquarters tower and galleria further west on Post Street, the city provided air space in exchange for the demolition of the upper floors of the building at 1 Montgomery. The roof of the bank is now a garden for the Crocker Galleria Shopping Center.

Found on both the interior and exterior of the windows are these little bats. They were designed by Arthur Putnam. Within the frieze, also done by Arthur Putnam, are mountain lions, wolves and foxes.

Arthur Putnam has also appeared many times in this website. Why bats? I have no idea, other than Putnam was well known for his animal sculptures.

Washington High School and the WPA

Posted by Cindy on June 18, 2013

Jun 182013

George Washington High School
600 32nd Avenue
Richmond District

George Washington High School opened on August 4, 1936, to serve as a secondary school for the people of San Francisco’s Richmond District. The school was built on a budget of $8,000,000 on a site overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

The architect was Timothy Pflueger, here he begins moving away from the highly decorative elements of his earlier Telephone Company Building and begins using symmetrical central elements, minimally embellished with fluted speed lines and simple plaques.

The lobby is decorated with WPA murals by Victor Arnautoff in the “buon fresco” styles. They depict scenes from the life and times of George Washington. In the second floor library, there is a WPA mural produced by Lucien Labaudt, entitled “Advancement of Learning through the Printing Press”, another by Ralph Stackpole titled “Contemporary Education” and “Modern and Ancient Science” by Gordon Langdon.

The stadium, auditorium, and gymnasium were added in 1940. The school was formally dedicated on Armistice Day of 1940.

The three figures over the door were sculpted by Victor Arnautoff.

Victor Arnautoff, painter, muralist, lithographer, sculptor and teacher, was born in Mariupol, Ukraine, in 1896. He served as a Cavalry officer in Czar Nicholas II’s army, receiving the Cross of the Order of St. George before escaping to Manchuria to avoid the Bolshevik Revolution. Arnautoff traveled to China and Mexico before emigrating to the U.S. and San Francisco in 1925.

He enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts where he studied sculpture with Ralph Stackpole and painting with Edgar Walters. Arnautoff returned to Mexico and studied mural painting with Diego Rivera.

By 1931 he had returned to San Francisco and shortly thereafter taught sculpture and fresco painting at the California School of Fine Arts. He also taught at Stanford University where he was Professor of Art from 1939 – 1960. His art affiliations included memberships in the San Francisco Art Association and the California Society of mural painters. Arnautoff was technical director and art chief of the Coit Tower murals project and is represented by a mural depicting city life.

He exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition, New York World’s Fair, Art Institute of Chicago, Palace of the Legion of Honor, Toledo Museum of Art, Foundation of Western Art, California Pacific Exposition, as well as annual shows of the San Francisco Art Association.

After the death of his wife in the 1960s, he returned to the USSR and died in Leningrad in 1979.

Shakespeare

George Washington

Thomas Edison

On the science building are two Arnautoff sculptures titled Power and Industry.

Puttin on the Ritz

Posted by Cindy on May 28, 2013

May 282013

Ritz Carlton
600 Stockton Street
Chinatown

Heralded as a “Temple of Commerce” when it opened in September 1909, the massive, 17-columned building spanning Stockton Street between California and Pine Streets, has been expanded five times and is now one of San Francisco’s best examples of neo-classical architecture.

The original structure, an 80′ x 80′ white cube with four giant engaged Ionic columns and rich filigree, revived the neo-classical architectural style popular with early 20th-Century financial institutions. It was designed by Napoleon Le Brun and Sons of New York to be Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s Pacific Coast headquarters.

Metropolitan Life commissioned the building after the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed the company’s offices and records in the Wells Fargo Building at Second and Mission Streets.

The original building was built to house the life insurer for a decade, but had to be expanded only five years after it opened. Miller and Colmesnil, a San Francisco architectural firm, bid $127,000 and won the contract to design two symmetrical wings with balconies. The wings were constructed in conjunction with the Stockton Tunnel, which links Union Square to Chinatown. Concrete piers were sunk beneath the tunnel floor to prevent the building’s foundations from shifting. The 28-foot wide wings, opened in 1914, more than doubled Metropolitan Life’s office space.

In 1916, Metropolitan Life purchased the lot north of the expanded building on California and Stockton Streets from the Episcopal Diocese of California. The second expansion, designed this time by prominent San Francisco architects J.R. Miller and Timothy Pflueger, (who has appeared many times in this website) duplicated the original Le Brun “temple.” Seventeen Ionic columns support an entablature of winged hourglasses and lion’s heads.

A triangular pediment with a dramatic tableau of nine larger-than-life figures crowns the portico over the building’s entrance. Sculpted in 1920 by Haig Patigian, the terra cotta figures symbolize the American Family “protected” by a winged allegorical figure representing “Insurance.” Patigian, can be found many times throughout this website.

The economic boom of the 1920s escalated the company’s business, triggering the building’s third expansion.

This wing continued the building’s neo-classical style using glazed terra cotta tiles, decorative winged hourglasses and lion’s heads. Because of Pine Street’s steep grade, the wing is seven floors on the downhill end and meets the original building’s main floor at the Pine Street wing’s fourth floor. Dedicated in 1930, the wing gave the building an “L” shape.

The building’s fourth addition in 1954 included the California Street wing and central garden courtyard. Designed by Thomsen and Wilson of San Francisco, this steel-frame, terra cotta clad addition is identical to the Pine Street wing and gave the building its “U” shape. Thomas Church, a renowned local landscape architect, designed the ornamental garden courtyard. Each enlargement maintained the original structure’s detailing and materials, making its elegant facades virtually seamless.

In 1973, Metropolitan Life relocated its Pacific Coast headquarters and Cogswell College acquired the building for its campus.

In 1985 Cogswell College again relocated. For the next three years, the building’s offices housed several small businesses on monthly and yearly leases. The nearly vacant building deteriorated. Its extensive renovation restored this landmark to its original beauty. It opened in April 1991 as the Ritz Carlton.

The building was named a San Francisco city landmark in 1984 and listed as Architecturally Significant.

350 Bush Street

Posted by Cindy on May 10, 2013

May 102013

San Francisco Mining Exchange
350 Bush Street
Financial District

The San Francisco Mining Exchange, the second oldest exchange in the United States after the New York Stock Exchange, was formed in 1862 to trade mining stocks. It is San Francisco Landmark #113.

When trading in mining stocks surged in the early 1920s, the Mining Exchange hired the firm Miller & Pflueger, whose work can be found all over San Francisco, to design this Beaux Arts building. 350 Bush is an adaptation of the classical temple form much favored by financial institutions in the period, the building’s pediment and four pairs of fluted columns recall the New York Stock Exchange, constructed twenty years earlier.

The building was a trading hall for mining commodities for only five years; the Mining Exchange relocated in 1928.

Subsequently the building was occupied by the San Francisco Curb Exchange (1928-1938). When the Curb Exchange was absorbed into the San Francisco Stock Exchange the building was occupied by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce (1938-1967), and then Western Title Insurance (1967-1979).

The following is adapted from the San Francisco City Planning Commission Resolution No. 8578 dated 1 May 1980:

“This building is the last visible remnant of the San Francisco Mining Exchange which dissolved in 1967. The exchange was instrumental in making San Francisco the financial center of the West, and its capital was used to develop the mines and other industries of the entire western United States. Names associated with the Exchange include Coit, Sharon, Ralston, Mills, Hearst, Flood, Sutro, Hopkins and many more whose fortunes were founded or greatly augmented on the Exchange.With the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859, the need for a central market for trading in mining stocks became apparent. In 1862, the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board was organized, housed first in the Montgomery Block, then in the Merchant’s Exchange.

By the middle of the 1870’s, the Exchange dominated the Western financial world, with capital from the East Coast and Europe pushing its volume of sales over that of the New York Stock Exchange, helping to establish the California-Montgomery Street area as “Wall Street West”.

By the early 1880’s, the Comstock began its permanent decline, and the Exchange’s specialization in mining stocks proved disastrous. In 1882, the rival San Francisco Stock and Bond Exchange, dealing in a wide range of commodities, was formed and prospered.

The silver discoveries in Tonopah, Nevada, in 1903 gave the Exchange new life, and in the 1920’s it commissioned Miller and Pflueger to design a grand Beaux Arts trading hall at 350 Bush Street.

In 1929, the Exchange, hard hit by the Crash, entered its final decline, with a brief revival during the uranium boom of the 1950’s. An investigation of irregularities in its operation by the Securities and Exchange Commission resulted in an order to close, and on August 15, 1967, after almost 105 years of existence, the Mining Exchange came to an end.”

The building has been vacant since 1979. The Swig Company and partners Shorenstein Properties LLC and Weiler-Arnow Investment Company purchased the Mining Exchange building in the 1960s. In 1979, The Swig Company and its partners began assembling the six land parcels around the Mining Exchange for the 350 Bush development. The partners obtained entitlements in the early 2000s. In 2007 Lincoln Property Company acquired the property from the Swig/Shorenstein and Weiler-Arnow group for $60 million. The intention was to break ground that spring, at this writing, that has not happened.

According to Heller Manus, the architects for the project, the historic exchange hall will be used as a grand lobby for a modern office building. The building will provide 360,000 sf of office space with a dramatic galleria at the street level as well as a mid-block pedestrian link between Bush and Pine Streets

The pediment was sculpted by Jo Mora. Joseph Jacinto “Jo” Mora (1876–1947) was an Uruguayan-born American cartoonist, illustrator and cowboy, who lived with the Hopi and wrote extensively about his experiences in California. He was an artist-historian, sculptor, painter, photographer, illustrator, muralist and author. He has been called the “Renaissance Man of the West”.

Mora was born on October 22, 1876 in Montevideo, Uruguay. His father was the Catalonian sculptor, Domingo Mora, and his mother was Laura Gaillard Mora, an intellectual French woman. His elder brother was F. Luis Mora, who would become an acclaimed artist and the first Hispanic member of the National Academy of Design. The family entered the United States in 1880 and first settled in New York, and then Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Jo Mora studied art in the New York and Boston, at the Art Student’s League in New York and the Cowles School in Boston. In 1903 he moved to Solvang, California. After wandering the Southwest he returned to San Jose, California.

By 1919, he was sculpting for the Bohemian Club, including a memorial plaque dedicated to Bret Harte, completed in August 1919 and mounted on the outside of the private men’s club building in San Francisco. In 1925, he designed the commemorative half dollar for the California Diamond Jubilee. Mora died October 10, 1947, in Monterey, California.

The building was reopened in 2018, you can read about the “restoration” here.

Edison and DaVinci by Olmsted

Posted by Cindy on April 23, 2013

Apr 232013

CCSF Ocean View Campus
50 Phelan
Sunnyside

According to CCSF’s website “Archibald Cloud, the Chief Deputy Superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, began in 1930 to vigorously articulate a long held educational dream: that the “premier” county in the State—San Francisco—must have the same educational “jewel” as did 38 of the State’s 58 counties. That is, it must have a junior college! Cloud hired world prominent architect, Timothy Pflueger. The two rapidly moved ahead with the design and the construction of the gymnasiums as well as Science Hall, a building they were determined to make into “a showplace of monumental architecture.”

As Vice Chairman of Fine Arts at the 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island, Pflueger was able to have transferred to the College, at no cost , several of the culturally significant projects created by artists during the fair. These include these two sculptures carved by Fredrick Olmsted. They are 7 feet high, four foot square, and 9 tons of granite, representing Leonardo DaVinci and Thomas Edison. (In researching these two pieces I have also found reference that they are limestone or Tuff stone, my personal opinion is that they are limestone.)

The sculptures were carved for the WPA exhibition “Art in Action”. Art in Action was an exhibit of artists at work displayed for four months in the summer of 1940 at the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) held on Treasure Island. Many famous artists took part in the exhibit, including Dudley C. Carter, woodcarver and Diego Rivera, muralist.

Frederick Olmsted (April 10, 1911-February 14, 1990) was born in San Francisco. A collateral relative of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Olmsted studied science at Stanford and art at the California School of Fine Arts, where he met and married Barbara Greene. In 1937, the couple visited fellow student Helen Phillips in Paris and spent time working at Atelier 17.

Olmsted worked in the WPA, assisting John Langley Howard and George Harris in the Coit Tower, creating his own mural on a three-foot panel above the main entrance. He also assisted Diego Rivera with his mural at the Art Institute in San Francisco. Olmsted created numerous murals and sculptures for public works in San Francisco, including the Theory and Science mural at San Francisco City College. He taught art for a while at Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

After Barbara and he divorced, he continued to work as a sculptor, moving to Cleveland where he designed medical equipment for the Cleveland Clinic. It was there he developed a machine to shock the diseased heart of one of his dogs, a prototype for today’s pacemaker. Olmsted then worked at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, designing equipment and machinery for the Oceanographic Institute. He died in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Called to Rise

Posted by Cindy on April 13, 2013

Apr 132013

235 Pine Street
Financial District

Called to Rise features individuals who have contributed significantly to the history of San Francisco. The figures include, Juan Bautista De Anza, Eadweard Muybridge, Makato Hagiwara, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, Chingwah Lee, Ishi, Alfred Louis Kroeber, Philip Burton, Amadeo Peter Giannini, Benjamin Franklin Norris, Timothy Pflueger, Douglas Tilden, Kurt Herbert Adler, Mary Ann Magnin, Harry Bridges, Robert Dollar, John C. Young, Howard Thurman, John Swett, Charlotte Amanda Blake Brown, Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessey.

Done in 1990 the sculptor was Thomas Marsh who has another piece here in San Francisco.

This bronze is part of the San Francisco 1% for Art Program.

The two bronze panels on each side of the door below the light explain the contributions of each person. Links are provided to art works representing the appropriate person or structure.

Juan Bautista de Anza (2735-c1788) Between 774 and 1776, De Anza brought settlers across vast deserts of the Spanish Southwest, without loss of life, into Alta California and the Bay of San Francisco.

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) Muybridge took a series of photographs at the Stanford Farm in Palo Alto that led directly to the invention of the motion picture camera.

Makato Hagiwara (1854-1925) Hagiwara conceived of the idea of the “fortune cookie” and, together with his son established the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.

Phoebe Apperson Hearst (1842-1919) Mother of William Randlolph Hearst, the San Francisco newspaper tycoon, Mrs. Hearst devoted herself to the improvement and expansion of the University of California.

Chungwah Lee (1901-1980) Lee, a Hollywood actor for 40 years helped establish Boy Scout Troop 3, the first all-chinese troop in the United States and the Chinese Historical Society of America.

Ishi (c1860-1916) Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960) Ishi, the last survivor of the Yahi people, worked in association with Kroeber to document the vanished language, customs, and values of his people.

Philip Burton (1926-1983) As author of the Golden Gate National Recreation Act, U.S. Congressman Burton helped preserve the headlands of Marin and northern edges of the San Francisco peninsula.

Amadeo Peter Giannini (1870-1949) Giannini established the Bank of Italy in North Beach, which he latr developed into the Bank of America, the premier bank of the United States.

Benjamin Franklin Norris (1870-1902) A writer of fiction, Norris helped establish the reputation of San Francisco as a romantic seaport city, alive with mystery and adventure.

Timothy Pflueger (1892-1946) Pflueger’s notable architectural achievements include the Pacific Stock Exchange Building, the Castro Theater, the Pacific Telephone Building on New Montgomery Street, and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Douglas Tilden (1860-1935) Tilden is famous for his bronze sculptures; the Mechanics Monument on Market Street and the Baseball Player and Junipero Serra statues in Golden Gate Park.

Kurt Herbert Adler (1905-1988( Under Adler, the San Francisco Opera won fame for its bold re-staging of classics and its willingness to produce new or previously obscure works.

Mary Ann Magnin (1849-1943) Magnin, a pioneer business woman opened a notions and fine needlework shop which later grew into I. Magnin & Co., specializing in imported European clothing.

Harry Bridges (1901-1990) Bridges, a longshoreman on the docks of San Francisco played a major role in a coastwide strike spearheaded by the International Longshoreman’s Association

Robert Dollar (1844-1932) Dollar is considered a pioneer in the evolution of San Francisco as in important trade and shipping center for the Asia Pacific Basin in the early twentieth century.

John C. Young (1912-1987) An Engineer from Stanford University, Young devoted himself to the improvement of San Francisco’s Chinatown and helped found the annual Chinese New Years Parade.

Howard Thurman (1900-1981) As a preacher writer and social activist, Reverend Thurman helped establish the intellectual and moral foundations of the Civil Rights Movement in America.

John Swett (1830-1913) Devoted to teaching and developing the public schools of San Francisco Swett helped form Lowell High School and pioneered the education of children in preparation for college.

Charlotte Amanda Blake Brown (1846-1904) Dr. Brown, a specialist in the care of women and children helped found Children’s Hospital. She also played a major role in establishing nursing education in San Francisco.

Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessey (1864-1934) As city engineer O’Shaughnessey laid out the municipal railway streetcar system and is mainly noted for his contributions to the Hetch Hetchy water and power system.

The Bell Telephone Building

Posted by Cindy on April 4, 2013

Apr 042013

140 New Montgomery
SOMA South of 5th

The building that stands at 140 New Montgomery was built in 1925 for the Pacific Telephone Company, part of the Bell System. It was, at the time, the first significant skyscraper in San Francisco, as well as the city’s first skyscraper in the Moderne style. According to the San Francisco Newsletter, published in 1925, “The interiors are entirely fireproof and are exceptionally well lighted. Its features include a cafeteria for women employees and an assembly hall seating 400 people.” It was also the first building to be wired so that each desk could have a personal telephone.

Designed by James Rupert Miller and Timothy Pflueger, the Bell Telephone Building is often categorized as both Neo Gothic-a style that borrows details from medieval Gothic architecture-and Art Deco, a style introduced at the 1925 Paris Exhibition that flourished throughout the 1930s and during WWII. Art Deco is based on geometric forms and places an emphasis on sleek appearances, reflecting the modernity of science and industry in the 20th century. The term “Moderne” is the United States Landmarks Commissions’ general term for styles of architecture that were popular from 1925 through the 1940s. It has expression in styles traditionally classified as Art Deco, Streamline Moderne, and WPA Moderne.

The building is 436 feet high with 26 floors. It is clad in nine different shades of grey granite-like terra cotta. Its original construction cost: $4.55 million dollars.

Miller and Pflueger were heavily influenced by Eliel Saarinen, winner of the 1922 second-prize design for The Chicago Tribune Tower, a design that was never executed. Saarinen used vertical elements and gradual setbacks in his design, which are characteristics of the Bell Telephone Building. (Set backs are step-like recessions in walls, initially used for structural reasons.)

In 1926 The San Francisco Examiner called 140 Montgomery “the shimmering gleaming monument to talk.”

The lobby floor is black polished marble. Overhead a red stenciled ceiling features intertwining black and gold designs of unicorns, phoenixes, clouds and odd creatures. All this is complimented by very elaborate elevator doors.

The building’s exterior is a paean to the Bell Phone system. The logo over the main entryway is surrounded by stylistic blue bells, the company’s iconic flower. There are small bells in panels across the facade as well.

The building has no Historic Landmark Status meaning it is not recognized by the US government for its historic significance. Because, however, it is categorized by the City of San Francisco as being of “individual importance” and “excellent” in architectural design, it is protected from demolition.

Bell Telephone Logos over each elevator

The Theater

Bought in 2007 by developers Wilson Meany, the building is undergoing a $50 plus million renovation. The new owners worked closely with numerous preservation boards and organizations responsible for historic building oversight to keep as much of the building intact as possible.For example, bas reliefs depicting a snake charmer, a bear, and other exotic figures on the walls of the assembly hall’s proscenium (the area between the curtain and the orchestra) will be saved. The original Bell logos will be recreated, mounted on hexagon medallions, and placed over each of the elevators in the lobby. Much of the terra cotta will need to be repaired, and every single window frame above the third floor will be replaced.

Flying phone books ornament the exterior of the building.

A large part of the construction process includes seismic retrofitting, which involves the modification of existing structures to make them more resistant to earthquakes. The engineers were concerned mostly with the exterior shell of the building: the terra cotta had not been maintained properly and there was some concern that it was in danger of breaking off in pieces and falling.

Originally slated to be high end condominiums in 2007 when it was purchased, the project focus changed when the office-space boom came back. The building is slated to hold 280,000 square feet of office space. The space will include amenities like a private outdoor tenant garden, showers, bike parking and repair rooms. There is plans for either first-class ground-floor dining or retail. The building is expected to open sometime this year. (2013)

The Pacific Coast Stock Exchange

Posted by Cindy on March 12, 2013

Mar 122013

301 Pine Street
Financial District

301 Pine Street-one of the historic buildings that comprised our financial system on the West Coast-began its life in 1915 as a sub-treasury building for the United States Treasury. In 1930, when the San Francisco Financial District was fast becoming the Wall Street of the West, the “gentlemen of the tape and ticker” sought a building to express the important financial work they were doing. They chose the San Francisco firm of Miller and Pflueger to remodel the old government building into a new Exchange.

Front of the building features a colonnade and granite staircase, the only remnants of the building’s original design.

At this point in his life architect Timothy Pflueger was interested in throwing out Classicism, a style of architecture modeled after ancient Greek and Roman structures; however, his commission required that he keep the colonnade and the granite stairs leading to the building, part of the original design by J. Milton Dyer of Cleveland, Ohio. As a result, the original building was completely gutted, and the only thing that remained was the front of the building we see today. The colonnade consists of ten Tuscan columns, and as part of the Tuscan Order, the entablature, the area above the columns, should have remained plain and simple. Instead, Pflueger chose to break the classical rules and placed two Art Deco medallions inside the entablature. Art Deco began in the 1920s and lasted for a good twenty years. Known for its linear symmetry, it was a nice fit with the simple Tuscan style that Pflueger was forced to keep.

Art Deco medallions inside the entablature of the Pacific Stock Exchange Building:

The massive Art Deco pieces that grace the Exchange were sculpted out of Yosemite granite by Ralph Stackpole. They are meant to show the polarity of agriculture and industry and are named accordingly. The sculptures were an important part of Pflueger’s move toward modern architecture, as he did not want any of the “classic” repetitive art on the exterior of the building.

Agriculture

Industry

The Pacific Coast Stock Exchange has a long history in the financial world of the United States. In 1882 nineteen gentlemen anted up $50 each to form the San Francisco Stock and Bond Exchange. In 1957 they merged with the Los Angeles Oil Exchange to become the Pacific Stock Exchange, although each town kept its own trading floor. In 1976 they began trading options, and options are still traded in a building around the corner. The trading floor closed in 2002, and the building was later sold to private developers. In a wonderful example of historic reuse, the tenant today is Equinox Fitness.

The Neo-Gothic Russ Building towers over the classical Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.

The Movie Palaces of Mission Street

Posted by Cindy on February 23, 2013

Feb 232013

The Mission District

Before Netflix, streaming videos and television, most people got their entertainment at a vaudeville/movie theater. These “palaces” were places to see and be seen. The Mission district was the home to at least five theaters whose marquees still can be seen amongst the graffiti and signage that marks the street.

Of these theaters, the El Capitan Theater was the crown jewel. Opened on June 29, 1928, it seated 2578 patrons.

The El Capitan was designed by famed theater designer Gustave Albert Lansburgh. Lansburgh was the principal architect of theaters all along the west coast from 1900 to 1930. The El Capitan was built for a group of businessmen, Ackerman, Harris and Oppen, who managed several San Francisco theaters.

Lansburgh, a graduate of UC Berkeley and a draftsman for Bernard Maybeck, gave the El Capitan a Spanish Colonial Revival interior with a Churrigueresque or Mexican Baroque façade.

Spanish Colonial Revival Architecture was born as a result of the Panama-California Exposition (held in San Diego in 1915), and became a style movement in the United States from 1915 to 1931. It is a hybrid style based on the architecture from the early Spanish colonization of North and South Americas. It started in California and Florida, which had the ideal climate for Mediterranean-inspired homes and remains popular to this day.

The style is usually marked by the use of smooth plaster and stucco walls with cast concrete ornamentation. Other characteristics often include small porches or balconies, tall double-hung windows, canvas awnings, decorative iron, ornamental tile work and arcades.

Churriqueresque, or Mexican Baroque was named after Spanish sculptor and architect Jose Benito de Churriquera. The style emerged in the 17th century and is marked by extremely expressive and florid decoration. It is normally found on the main entrance façade of a building.

Not only was the El Capitan the most opulent of the many Mission Street theaters, it was also the second largest movie theater in town. It was the first to bring second-run films in wide-screen cinema scope to the Mission, and did so until the fall of 1953. (Second run films are often shown in less popular venues after opening in larger well-known theaters; these theaters keep a larger share of the ticket fees and often charge a lower ticket price.)

Sadly decreasing revenue-due to the advent of television-coupled with the large operating costs of such a grand theater, the El Capitan closed on July 24, 1956. The next year it tried for a second life, reopening on May 1, 1957, with reduced prices, but to no avail. The theater was permanently closed before the year was out.

The final indignity to the El Capitan was its gutting in 1964. The grand Churriqueresque entry way now serves as a portal to a large parking lot.

The Wigwam was opened at 2555 Mission Street in 1913 by Joe Bauer. Al Jolson always played here when he was in town. The theater became the New Rialto (1930-1947) then the Crown (1947-1974), and finally ended its life as the Cine Latino when it closed in 1990.

At 2465 Mission Street stands the Majestic Theater. This two-story, 870-seat theater opened in April 1912. A 1937 name change to “The Tower” accompanied a remodel in a Streamline Moderne style by architect S. Charles Lee. Lee was another of the celebrated and prolific theater architects of his generation, and a huge proponent of Streamline Moderne and Art Deco in theater design. The theater closed in 1996.

The Grand (2665 Mission Street) opened in 1940. Designed by Alexander A. Cantin (an Oakland native and one of the first licensed architects in California) and A. MacKenzie Cantin, the Grand showed third-run films to a potential audience of 850 people. The theater closed in 1988.

The New Mission is the last on our tour. The New Mission was designed by the Reid brothers, the greater Bay Area’s most prolific designers of vaudeville and movie theaters. Built in 1915, it had 2000 seats. In 1932, Timothy Pflueger designed a renovated New Mission in an Art Deco Style. The fate of this movie house has remained in limbo since it closed in 1993. Since then, the “Save-New-Mission” preservation group has worked actively to see that the palace does not disappear. Its fate is still unknown as of the publication of this article.

450 Sutter, A Mayan Palace

Posted by Cindy on December 22, 2012

Dec 222012

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 the Great Depression.

Art Deco is commonly divided into three related design trends: Streamline Moderne, Classical Moderne and Zigzag Moderne. Zigzag, represented by angular patterns and stylized geometry, flourished in large cities and was primarily used for public and commercial buildings.

The Mayan Revival (also called neo-Mayan) was one of the facets of Zigzag Moderne. Mayan Revival was used primarily in the 1920s and ’30s. Although it was named “Mayan,” it drew on the motifs of many of the Meso-American cultures, such as Mexica and Aztec.

450 Sutter Street, completed in 1929, was designed by James Rupert Miller and Timothy L. Pflueger. A steel curtain-wall building, 450 Sutter broke from tradition with the building’s skin design. Miller and Pflueger covered the 26 floors with heavy Mayan Revival style patterns-undulating verticals of ornamented terracotta run from the first floor to the roof. The addition of horizontal bands of windows adds to the overall effect of richness and complexity. The street level and entry are cast in aluminum. In the lobby, cast bronze alternates with Burgundy/Levanto marble.

The building was designed and built for dental salesman Francis Edward Morgan Jr. at a cost of $5 million (including the land). The building was built specifically to house doctors’ and dentists’ offices. According to advertisements, offices could be custom outfitted with electrical and plumbing as the tenant needed. Rents began at $50 a month for three rooms and $100 a month for five. At the time of its construction, it was not only the second tallest building in San Francisco, but said to be the largest medical office building in the world.

The unusual motifs and ornamentation of this grand building received mixed reviews at the time of its opening. The San Francisco Chronicle quieted any discord with the following 1929 review:

“Speculation has been rife as to the meaning of these graceful symbols, but their meaning is negligible-they justify themselves by being graceful and attractive. They give the front of the building just enough feeling of movement to emphasize the general vitality of a severe but thoroughly virile design. They tell the passerby any story he chooses to read into them-and that is poetry.”

450 Sutter was one of the last great skyscrapers to be built in San Francisco in the first half of the century.

Cast bronze and cast aluminum lobby ceiling

Cast aluminum elevator doors surrounded by burgundy/levanto marble

Union Square – Lamp Posts

Posted by Cindy on March 25, 2012

Mar 252012

Union Square

Union Square Collonade by Ron M. Fischer

Union Square was built and dedicated by San Francisco’s first mayor, John Geary in 1850 and is so named for the pro-Union rallies that happened there before and during the United States Civil War. Since then, the plaza has undergone many notable changes with the first most significant change happening in 1903 with the dedication of a 97 ft tall monument to Admiral George Dewey’s victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish American War. The second major significant change happened between 1939-1941 when a large underground parking garage was built under the square that relocated the plaza’s lawns, shrubs and the Dewey monument to the garage “roof.” It was the world’s first underground parking garage and was designed by Timothy Pflueger. The third most notable change was a $25million reconstruction in 2001.

These light fixtures by R.M. Fischer were specifically designed for the Union Square renovation. Fischer playfully invents a new visual style combining references to San Francisco’s rich Victorian architectural heritage with natural and ultramodern forms. According to Fischer, the work is intended to appear futuristic and historic simultaneously. “It is not an attempt to depict any particular idea of the future, but rather to suggest a sense of forward looking optimism and delight.” The resulting light sculptures are homogeneous hybrids ideally suited to San Francisco’s evolving urban fabric.

Fischer’s work consists of four unique sculptures ranging in height from 24 to 18 feet. Three of the works are composed of combinations of historic, painted lighting figures, polished stainless steel globes and larger clear spheres that are illuminated at night. The fourth work incorporates a five-foot in diameter brushed stainless steel sphere divided into two sections that are lit from within. The works are mounted polished red granite columns. Each sculpture is intended to aesthetically function as an individual work and as part of a linear ensemble and boundary for the square.

New York artist R.M. Fischer has had an illustrious career as both a gallery and public artist. He began his career using recycled materials to create eccentric, anthropomorphic light sculptures. His work received critical acclaim, leading to commissions for exterior public works including a lighted gate for Battery Park City in New York, light scones for the Holland Tunnel, and a multi-million dollar artwork composed of light columns for the Kansas City Convention Center. This is Mr. Fischer’s first commission in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Pacific Coast Stock Exchange

Posted by Cindy on November 8, 2011

Nov 082011

Financial District

Pacific Coast Stock Exchange

The Pacific Stock Exchange began life as a classical U.S. Treasury building, then in the 1930’s, Timothy Pflueger was hired to turn it into the Stock Exchange. He was growing weary of classicism but was instructed that the granite stairs and the ten Tuscan columns had to remain. The building was essentially torn town, leaving the front we see today. Then Pflueger met Ralph Stackpole, and a wonderful working relationship was formed.

Stackpole created the medallions on the entablature, as well as the two gorgeous art deco statues that grace the sides of the building.

This is titled Industry

This is titled Agriculture

Ralph Ward Stackpole (May 1, 1885 – December 13, 1973) was an American sculptor, painter, muralist, etcher and art educator, San Francisco’s leading artist during the 1920s and 1930s. Stackpole was involved in the art and causes of social realism, especially during the Great Depression, when he was part of the Federal Art Project for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Stackpole was friends with Diego Rivera and influential in having him brought to San Francisco for work on the Pacific Club.

If you are interested in more about the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange and it’s architecture you can read about it at Untapped Cities