Crown Zellerbach Building (1959)




This is the purest of the early International-style buildings in San Francisco. The monolithic south wall of the elevator service wing is clad with almost five million one inch square titles of subtly shifing dark colors. The glass walls are tinted green. The lobby is surrounded by sheet glass and has a ceiling of about fifteen thousand small cylindrical lights. The elevator lobby is paneled in patterned marble. The travertine lobby floor continues outdoors as a platform to a circular accordion-shaped roofed and glass-walled pavilion that was originally a Wells-Fargo Branch.

1 Bush Street
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, architects (Hertzka and Knowles)