三藩 CBD 漫步A City Walk in San Francisco

San Francisco put a phoenix on its flag in 1900, six years before the fire everyone now assumes it stands for. The bird had been on the city seal since 1852, back when the fires people had in mind were the six that burned the young town down between 1849 and 1852. One Saturday afternoon in July 2024 we walked across downtown, which is the part of the city that has done the most coming back.

North Beach#

We started at Columbus Tower, the copper flatiron from 1907. Coppola has owned it since the seventies, film company upstairs, Café Zoetrope on the ground floor under red awnings, a neon Cafe Bar sign screwed onto the turret and unlit at two in the afternoon.

Jackson Square#

One block east, Jackson Square holds the blocks that came through 1906 with their walls still up.

Around the corner, in the same building, is William Stout Architectural Books. Sherman’s bank now keeps a room full of books about buildings.

Two Transamericas#

A block down Montgomery, where Columbus comes in at an angle, is a white beaux-arts corner from 1909: John Fugazi’s bank for the Italian immigrants of North Beach, later the first office of the Transamerica Corporation.

Across the street the corporation’s own monument goes up forty-eight floors and closes to a point. It was finished in 1972, and it follows you all afternoon: over the copper turret in North Beach, past an old cornice two blocks south.

The Financial District#

Further south the streets narrow and the banks stop being charming. 555 California, once the world headquarters of Bank of America, gives its address in bronze letters on a carnelian plinth, and the pyramid turns up in its bay windows. The Russ Building answers with a Gothic arch and a pair of gargoyles: when it opened in 1927 it was the tallest thing in the city, and it stayed that way for thirty-seven years.

The decades in between are all here too. One Bush, the Crown Zellerbach tower from 1959 and usually called the city’s first glass box, stands on columns over a plaza of pebble paving and olive trees, with a long red bench that nobody was using. A block on, a red brick survivor sits flush against the striped grid of 44 Montgomery, wallpaper from two different rooms.

One Montgomery#

At Post Street the door of One Montgomery was open, so we went in. Willis Polk built the hall in 1908 for the First National Bank. It passed to Wells Fargo, which moved out in 2019. The room is landmarked, so it stays exactly as it is.

Market Street#

Polk turns up again on Market Street. The Hobart Building.

The Palace Hotel keeps the Garden Court behind its doors, under a leaded glass roof from 1909. At ten to four the chandeliers were lit and there was nobody underneath them.

Union Square#

Post Street runs up to Union Square. The buildings behind the square have been swapped out era by era, 1900s cornice, 1980s granite, Salesforce Tower closing the end of the street. There was surely a band on this square in the 1980s too, and somebody sitting nearby not quite listening.

The oldest thing still doing the job it was built for came past at Powell and Post. On the front standard was the city flag, the phoenix out on its rounds.

Over the hill#

Powell climbs from there. From the top of Nob Hill the downtown towers stand clear of one another, brown granite and pale blue glass in flat afternoon light, and the cross streets fall away toward the bay with gold already coming onto their edges by six.

Clay Street#

The last institution of the day was on Clay Street: the Chinese YWCA, built in 1932 to Julia Morgan’s design. Downhill behind it, the pyramid again.

A few doors along, 949 is a red door with a mail slot and a mosaic threshold. No architect worth naming, nothing that burned and came back, no story at all. It was the door holding that day’s sunset.