The San Francisco experience is not an encounter you can enjoy in an hour or a day or at a particular time or location. It is a composite of innumerable experiences over long periods of time in the entire region around the bay. San Francisco as a social and cultural entity long ago spilled over the political boundaries that were drawn up a century ago for another era. Nearly one-third of the people who during the day work and shop within the city limits go home at night beyond the bay or down the Peninsula. Nearly all of the tourists and visitors who come to the city also visit the far shores. Even the relatively few who do not venture across the bridges experience something of the far shores when they gaze across the bay from Nob Hill or Russian Hill or through the big windows at the Top of the Mark or the Crown Room of the Fairmont. —from the Preface
The Castro Theatre, the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Headquarters, 450 Sutter Medico-Dental Buildingthesemasterpieces of San Francisco's Art Deco heritage are the work of one man: Timothy Pflueger. An immigrant's sonwith only a grade-school education, Pflueger began practicing architecture after San Francisco's 1906 earthquake. While his contemporaries looked to Beaux-Arts traditions to rebuild the city, he brought exotic Mayan, Asian, and Egyptian forms to buildings ranging from simple cocktail lounges to the city's first skyscrapers. Pflueger was one of the city's most prolificarchitects during his 40-year career. He designed two major downtown skyscrapers, two stock exchanges, several neighborhood theaters, movie palaces for four smaller cities (including the beloved Paramount in Oakland), some ofthe city's biggest schools, and at least 50 homes. His works include the San Francisco Stock Exchange, the ever-popularTop of the Mark, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and the San Francisco World's Fair. It is a testament to his talentthat many of his buildings still stand and many have been named landmarks. Therese Poletti tells the fascinating story of Pflueger's life and work in Art Deco San Francisco. In lively detail, she relates how Pflueger built extravagant compositions in metal, concrete, and glass. She also tells the story behind the architecture: Pflueger's commissioning and support of muralist Diego Rivera, his association with photographer Ansel Adams and sculptor Ralph Stackpole, and his childhood friendship turned to adulthood sponsorship with San Francisco Mayor James "Sunny" Rolph Jr. Beautiful archival photography mixes with stunning new photography in this collection of a truly Californian, but ultimately American, story.
What meanings do buildings and places convey to the people who use and visit them? Too often, design competitions and signature architecture result in costly eyesores that do not work. How can sponsors and clients get more meaningful results? In answer to these questions, Dr Nasar, supported by riveting studies of competitions and Peter Eisenman's competition-winning design for the Wexner Center at the Ohio State University, suggests the use of pre-jury evaluation (PJE). He shows the potential value of this approach as well as visual quality programming for many kinds of environmental design for which the client wants to convey certain desirable meanings. The studies, from those specific to the Wexner Center to those covering the scope of history, point to an alternative method for shaping the visual form of buildings, places and cities.
This study of ethnic violence in the United States from 1877 to 1914 reveals that not all ethnic groups were equally likely to be victims of violence; the author seeks the reasons for this historical record. This analysis of the causes of urban racial and ethnic strife in large American cities at the turn of the century should comprise important empirical and theoretical reference material for social scientists and historians alike.
Richard Longstreth provides a detailed picture of the early careers of four architects—Bernard Maybeck, Willis Polk, Ernest Coxhead, and A.C. Schweinfurth—who had a decisive impact on the course of design in the San Francisco Bay Area and who stand as significant contributors to American architecture.
A major urban history of the design and development of postwar San Francisco Designing San Francisco is the untold story of the formative postwar decades when U.S. cities took their modern shape amid clashing visions of the future. In this pathbreaking and richly illustrated book, Alison Isenberg shifts the focus from architects and city planners—those most often hailed in histories of urban development and design—to the unsung artists, activists, and others who played pivotal roles in rebuilding San Francisco between the 1940s and the 1970s. Previous accounts of midcentury urban renewal have focused on the opposing terms set down by Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs—put simply, development versus preservation—and have followed New York City models. Now Isenberg turns our attention west to colorful, pioneering, and contentious San Francisco, where unexpectedly fierce battles were waged over iconic private and public projects like Ghirardelli Square, Golden Gateway, and the Transamerica Pyramid. When large-scale redevelopment came to low-rise San Francisco in the 1950s, the resulting rivalries and conflicts sparked the proliferation of numerous allied arts fields and their professionals, including architectural model makers, real estate publicists, graphic designers, photographers, property managers, builders, sculptors, public-interest lawyers, alternative press writers, and preservationists. Isenberg explores how these centrally engaged arts professionals brought new ideas to city, regional, and national planning and shaped novel projects across urban, suburban, and rural borders. San Francisco’s rebuilding galvanized far-reaching critiques of the inequitable competition for scarce urban land, and propelled debates over responsible public land stewardship. Isenberg challenges many truisms of this renewal era—especially the presumed male domination of postwar urban design, showing how women collaborated in city building long before feminism’s impact in the 1970s. An evocative portrait of one of the world’s great cities, Designing San Francisco provides a new paradigm for understanding past and present struggles to define the urban future.
