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)

Bank of America Building (1990)

The 52-story (779 foot) building dominates the San Francisco skyline with its bulk and dark color,and was designed by Myron Goldsmith and Mark Goldstein. On the entie length of its rise, sawtooth bays on a polished dark-granite skin masterfully pick up the late afternoon sun, turning the tower (at least for brief moments) from a menacing presence above the white city into a purple-hued march into night. Massive piers support a glass curtain wall on the separate low-rise banking hall. Both tower and hall are set within a raised and austere plaza reached by a wide cascading stairway

Bank of America Building (1990)
555 California St
Skidmore, Owings and Merill, Wurster, Bernardi and Emmons, Pietro Belluschi

345 California Center (1986)

These Siamese towers are set on angle to the grid, rising up out of the middle of a block (between the older Dollar buildings) and staying connected above via a series of sky bridges.


345 California (1986)
George Kelham

Hancock Building (1959)

The current industrial indemnity Building is one of San Francisco's earliest glass-tinctured skyscrapers, and was designed by Chuck Bassett. Above the recessed base is a series of piers resolving into haunched arches. Polished dark-gray granite panels with delicate changes of plane sheathe the reinforced concrete building.


Hancock Building (1959)
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
255 California St

Alcoa Building

This powerful skyscraper anticipates Chicago's larger John Hancock Building and provides a visual guarantee against disruptive seismic forces. Twelve mammoth x-braces act as giant trusses. Sheathed in bronze-coloroed anodized aluminum, the raking diagonal exo-skeleton project three and one-half feet beyond the window plane. Chuck Bassett and Myron Goldsmith intended the diagonals to work solely in tension, thus reducing the weight and mass of the building. The roof gardens (by landscape architects Sasaki, Walker Assoc.) open a series of outdoor rooms delineated by fencing, paving and planters.

Alcoa Building
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
Battery St, between Clay and Washinton Sts.

Metropolitan Life Building (1973)

The 525-foot tower rises as a perfectly rectangular slab, and is sheathed in anodized aluminum.

Metropolitan Life Building (1973)
424 Market ST

Shaklee Terraces (1982)

The horizonal pattern of extra-smooth dark galss and gray steel is countered by a series of stepped corners that adjust to Market Street and provide a greater number of valued corner offices

Shaklee Terraces (1982)
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Federal Reserve Bank Building (1983)

A street-level loggia reinterprets the ground-story arched bases common all over the downtown. Upper stories step back in two-story increments of polished granite and dark strip windows.


Federal Reserve Bank Building (1983)
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
100 Block Market Street