San Francisco"s first significant office building
Compactness, always a fine feature of the financial district, makes it possible to see the big, new buildings there without seven-league boots. San Francisco's first significant office building, commonly known as the "Monkey Block," stood for a hundred years on Montgomery at Washington. It was built in 1853 by "Old Brains," General Henry W. Halleck, on a foundation of redwood logs. Architect Piero Patri has submitted to the city a plan to convert the nonentity now on this site to a cultural center, complete with pedestrian malls, pavilion, arcade and garage.
Today the significant buildings are farther along the street. One the walker will enjoy visiting is 420 Montgomery, where the Wells Fargo Bank has its history room. Here, as nowhere else in the city, the drama, humor, dignity, and sometimes all-too-human scale of Man's pursuit of money, is revealed. Wells Fargo also has a stunning 1877 photographic panorama of San Francisco lining the walls of its 14th floor executive suite. The photographer was Eadward Muybridge, famous today as the father of the motion article. It was he who photographed horses trotting so Leland Stanford could win a bet. In his own time Muybridge was well known for shooting his wife's lover in the cold white heat of premeditation. A jury acquitted him with the comment from its foreman, "Hell, we'd of done the same thing!"
Downtown offices are usually as inaccessible to the casual walker as the castle was for Kafka, but each year there is an office and industry tour sponsored by the auxiliary of the San Francisco Senior Center which magically opens flossy doors. This tour is worth watching for. It usually includes some fairly distinguished quarters, Wells Fargo's executive floor among them.
Some financial district buildings are visually exciting from the street. Look at the Golden Gate National Bank, the Crown Zellerbach Building, with its mall and witty carousel bank, the John Hancock Building, whose arches roof the sidewalk, to the delight of rainy day window-shoppers, San Francisco Federal Savings, which has an air curtain, and the Bethlehem and International Buildings. All of these have architectural concern for the eyeline as well as the skyline, a wonderfully human consideration common in great European cities, but in the past of wall-to-wall canyons, much lacking in ours. Such architectural enrichment could be a factor in saving cities as cultural centers.
Inside the new buildings the walker will encounter many other trends quickening. One is that industry has discovered the best employees, especially those whose work is dull, go to the firms which have the most pleasant surroundings. This has made it good business to provide generous space, imaginative color, good lighting, comfortable furnishings and elegant lounges unto the least of these. Calendar art and institutional blah are out. Gardens in the sky and fountains are in. Original art is now not only de rigueur in top-brass bailiwicks but also in corridors, cafeterias, waiting rooms and public lobbies. To hundreds of San Franciscans, reflecting the city's tradition of merry irreverence, the Mascharini bronze sculpture in the Crown Zellerbach lobby is already fondly known as "Olive Oyl." The great stone face in the Hancock garden is not John Hancock.
Today the significant buildings are farther along the street. One the walker will enjoy visiting is 420 Montgomery, where the Wells Fargo Bank has its history room. Here, as nowhere else in the city, the drama, humor, dignity, and sometimes all-too-human scale of Man's pursuit of money, is revealed. Wells Fargo also has a stunning 1877 photographic panorama of San Francisco lining the walls of its 14th floor executive suite. The photographer was Eadward Muybridge, famous today as the father of the motion article. It was he who photographed horses trotting so Leland Stanford could win a bet. In his own time Muybridge was well known for shooting his wife's lover in the cold white heat of premeditation. A jury acquitted him with the comment from its foreman, "Hell, we'd of done the same thing!"
Downtown offices are usually as inaccessible to the casual walker as the castle was for Kafka, but each year there is an office and industry tour sponsored by the auxiliary of the San Francisco Senior Center which magically opens flossy doors. This tour is worth watching for. It usually includes some fairly distinguished quarters, Wells Fargo's executive floor among them.
Some financial district buildings are visually exciting from the street. Look at the Golden Gate National Bank, the Crown Zellerbach Building, with its mall and witty carousel bank, the John Hancock Building, whose arches roof the sidewalk, to the delight of rainy day window-shoppers, San Francisco Federal Savings, which has an air curtain, and the Bethlehem and International Buildings. All of these have architectural concern for the eyeline as well as the skyline, a wonderfully human consideration common in great European cities, but in the past of wall-to-wall canyons, much lacking in ours. Such architectural enrichment could be a factor in saving cities as cultural centers.
Inside the new buildings the walker will encounter many other trends quickening. One is that industry has discovered the best employees, especially those whose work is dull, go to the firms which have the most pleasant surroundings. This has made it good business to provide generous space, imaginative color, good lighting, comfortable furnishings and elegant lounges unto the least of these. Calendar art and institutional blah are out. Gardens in the sky and fountains are in. Original art is now not only de rigueur in top-brass bailiwicks but also in corridors, cafeterias, waiting rooms and public lobbies. To hundreds of San Franciscans, reflecting the city's tradition of merry irreverence, the Mascharini bronze sculpture in the Crown Zellerbach lobby is already fondly known as "Olive Oyl." The great stone face in the Hancock garden is not John Hancock.
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