The Bay Area architecture is not so well known for defining a particular architectural style, rather, with its interesting and inspiring variations of geography and topology and tumultuous history, San Francisco especially is known worldwide for its particular mix of Victorian and modern architecture.
Within its fascinating mix of styles, following is a list of our favorite buildings around the Bay Area and California!
Frank Lloyd Wright at 140 Maiden Lane
A true and hidden gem of San Francisco architecture is a Frank Lloyd Wright building at 140 Maiden Lane, just off Union Square. It was designed in 1948 and features a small scale version of the spiral ramp gallery, which Frank Lloyd Wright famously incorporated into the design of New York City’s Guggenheim museum. The building exterior is yellow brick and features a four tiered Romanesque arched entryway tunnel. The interior fixtures and furnishings were all custom designed for the building using black walnut. The original client V.C. Morris was a retailer of fine glass and silver, china, linens and art objects for the home. The interior was significantly restored in 1979 by an art and antiques retailer named Xanadu. The current tenant is the Neapolitan high-end menswear firm Isaia.
Find out more about the building architecture through this scanned catalogue describing the original architecture, including a floor plan.
Palace of Fine Arts
In 1915 when the Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) opened, it was a time of turmoil for the world and for the City of San Francisco. The City was just recovering from the terrible earthquake and fire of 1906. The nations of Europe were engaged in economic and political troubles that would lead to the start of World War I. Bernard R. Maybeck was chosen as architect for the Palace of Fine Arts. A student of the École des Beaux-Arts, his design reflects the impression of a Roman ruin. The inspiration for the Palace, with its soaring colonnade, grand rotunda, and carefully constructed pond, was meant to evoke quiet sadness and solemnity.
Bradbury Building
An iconic building in California is The Bradbury Building, built in 1893 in Central Los Angeles. The building was commissioned by Los Angeles gold-mining millionaire Lewis L. Bradbury and constructed by draftsman George H. Wyman from the original design by Summer Hunt. The decorative iron railings, marble staircases, open cage elevators and soaring atrium are iconic features of the building’s interior. The Bradbury Building was featured in the 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner, as the setting for the character J.F. Sebastian’s apartment, including the climatic rooftop scene with Rick Deckard played by Harrison Ford and Roy played by Rutger Hauer.
de Young Memorial Museum by Herzon de Meuron
The M.H. de Young Memorial Museum houses numerous collections, representing a variety of cultures from all over the world. The works of art in these collections go from the present day all the way back to the beginnings of human history. The museum is therefore not a homotopical site, defined by a homogeneous, self-contained approach to art, but rather a heterotypical site that is open and receptive to the artistic diversity of our planet.
The architecture of the new building seeks to communicate this diversity; it is an embodiment of the open-ended concept of art fostered by the museum. It expresses the distinctiveness of different cultures and, at the same time, it is a place of common ground, where diversity meets and intersects, where otherwise hidden kinships between divergent cultural forms become visible and tangible.
California Academy of Sciences by Renzo Piano
The California Academy of Sciences was founded in San Francisco in 1853. It is one of the most prestigious institutions in the US, and one of the few institutes of natural sciences in which public experience and scientific research occur at the same location. Combining exhibition space, education, conservation and research beneath one roof, the Academy also comprises natural history museum, aquarium and planetarium. The varied shapes of these different elements are expressed in the building’s roofline, which follows the form of its components. This “living roof” is covered with 1,700,000 selected autochthonous plants planted in specially conceived biodegradable coconut-fibre containers. The roof is flat at its perimeter and, like a natural landscape, becomes increasingly undulating as it moves away from the edge to form a series of domes of various sizes rising up from the roof plane.
16th Street Train Station in Oakland
It is a Beaux-Arts building designed by Jarvis Hunt, opened on August 1, 1912. The Station was featured in Western Architect that year. The Station served as the terminus for the trans-continental railway, the last Western stop. It was damaged in the 1989 earthquake, but it’s still used today for event rentals.
8 Octavia Street by Stanley Saitowitz
This controversial residential building by Stanley Saitowitz is located in Hayes Valley. There’s no middle ground on this one, either you love it or hate it. The long thin mass of building floats above the street to make public commercial space at both ends. The buildings louvered fins on the residential units above the street level can change time of day and seasons, responding to the variation in climatic conditions to adjust the interiors. On this predominantly western façade, each occupant can modulate the sunlight and sound in their unit, controlling the temperature and re-drawing the exterior elevation as they do. The result is an ever changing look to the building as you exit the 101 Freeway, cross Market Street and enter Hayes Valley.
Marin County Civic Center by Frank Lloyd Wright
The Marin County Civic Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is located in San Rafael, California, United States. Intended to centralize thirteen dispersed Marin county departments, the Civic Center project encompassed an entire campus of civic structures and incorporated ideas from Wright’s Broadacre City scheme of the 1930s. The concrete Civic Center’s pink stucco walls, blue roof and scalloped balconies are distinctive. The interiors feature glass walls and are arranged around open atriums in order to promote the transparency that Wright felt governments should promote. Though Wright planned the atriums to be open to the sky, practical considerations saw barrel-vaulted skylights put in following Wright’s death.
Hearst Castle by Julia Morgan
Hearst Castle’s history begins in 1865, when George Hearst purchased 40,000 acres of ranchland. After his mother’s death in 1919, William Randolph Hearst inherited thousands of acres around San Simeon, and over time, he purchased more. The spread eventually encompassed about 250,000 acres. With architect Julia Morgan, Hearst conceived a retreat he called La Cuesta Encantada—Spanish for “Enchanted Hill.” By 1947, when Hearst had to leave the remote location because of his fragile health, the estate was still unfinished even though it comprised 165 rooms and 123 acres of gardens, terraces, pools and walkways—all built to Hearst’s specifications and showcasing a legendary art collection.
César Pelli’s upcoming work on the Salesforce Tower will define San Francisco’s skyline. At 1,070 feet tall, the tower will be the highest in the city upon completion. Pelli’s superior design incorporates the newest sustainable practices, neighborhood development, and financial feasibility. CPA is also behind the Transbay Transit Center at the base of the Salesforce Tower. The Center is a $4.5 billion project dubbed the “Grand Central Station of the West.” Upon completion, it will be the main transit hub of the Bay Area and feature a 5.4-acre public park on the roof. Perhaps Pelli’s most recognizable work to date in San Francisco is the 2002 JPMorgan Chase Building on the border between South of Market and the Financial District.
The Stone House of John Marsh by Thomas Boyd
In a trail with stunning views of Mount Diablo and the east bay valley, there is an interesting stone house which has been unoccupied for a long time. While doing some research and came across its fascinating history. It is described as The Stone House of John Marsh and he was a well-known Doctor and Harvard Graduate in the area around 1850. It was designed by Architect Thomas Boyd of San Francisco. Mr. Marsh’s wife had passed away before completion of the mansion and he only got to live in the home three weeks before he was murdered! The house has been renovating in recent years so it looks much nicer than when it looked like a worn out shed.
The Paramount Theatre by Timothy L. Pflueger
Oakland’s Paramount Theatre is one of the finest remaining examples of Art Deco design in the United States. Designed by renowned San Francisco architect Timothy L. Pflueger and completed in late 1931, it was one of the first Depression-era buildings to incorporate and integrate the work of numerous creative artists into its architecture and is particularly noteworthy for its successful orchestration of the various artistic disciplines into an original and harmonious whole.