At the time of the missions
The Spanish left their mark on the region with their astonishing adobe architecture, of which the missions and presidios are the great representatives. The missions are characterized by a rectangular plan dominated by a large central courtyard around which are organized the church, the workshops and the convento, an arcaded building housing the priests. Recognized by its bell tower(campanario), the church is of great simplicity, its façade often punctuated only by niches in the gable to house the bells. Adobe walls (usually whitewashed) up to 1 metre thick and roofs of pink or red glazed tiles provide shade and coolness. Inside, the frameworks reveal the mastery of wood, in particular the redwood found in abundance in the region, whose imposing beams are secured by leather straps. Mission Dolores is San Francisco's oldest building, and one of California's most beautiful missions. Don't miss Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma and Mission San Carlos Borromeo in Carmelo-by-the-Sea. Presidios are military forts. The one in San Francisco illustrates the evolution of defensive architecture, from a simple fortified camp with adobe buildings, to a veritable military base with wooden, then brick and finally concrete buildings. In Monterey, the Larkin House, still made of adobe and redwood, marks a turning point in terms of domestic housing, with its multi-storey structure and balconies, front veranda, double-glazed windows and shingled roof... all elements linked to the Anglo-Saxon influence, which can also be seen in the increasingly frequent use of brick. This mixed style, known as Monterey Colonial, is very much in evidence in Monterey State Historic Park.
The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush saw the emergence of countless " boomtowns"... towns built in less time than it takes to say it! The rules of construction were always the same: first, a square-plan wooden building with one or two storeys and an almost flat roof was built to reduce wasted space, then a sort of facade was added, extending beyond the roofline. Medallions, crenellations and tiers adorned the gables. Today, many of these towns have become ghost-towns, the most famous being Bodie, an astonishing blend of brick and wood. The historic district of Old Sacramento also preserves superb examples of this architecture, with its 3 perfectly restored blocks featuring raised, covered boardwalks, pedimented buildings and, of course... saloons! Gold fever also swept through San Francisco, which inherited its nickname of "Instant City" from the hundreds to the thousands in the space of a few months.
But this transformation was not without difficulty, as the city had developed on marshy ground. Initially, wooden planks were thrown across the streets to make them passable, while a wide variety of materials were used to fill in the roads and create a jetty leading to the hundreds of ships waiting in the port. In this way, the town gradually advanced out to sea, eventually encircling the derelict ships in the cove (some of which were even converted into homes!), while the hills were filled with houses. In an attempt to counteract this somewhat anarchic development, the authorities decided to apply a checkerboard layout to the town... but applying such a geometrically rigorous layout to such a diverse and steep terrain created situations that were, to say the least, ubiquitous. This is how the city's famous streets came to be, with vertiginous inclines and flights of stairs safer than smooth slopes!
Architectural boom
The 19th century is one of the most fascinating periods in San Francisco's architectural history. It's from this period that the "Old Painted Ladies" date, wooden houses in a wide variety of styles, in the great Victorian tradition. These houses are inseparable from a standardized construction technique that was widespread at the time: the balloon-frame, a light structure made of planks serving as a framework to which large wooden panels are attached, which in turn are covered with plaster or shingles, the whole structure resting on a brick foundation. Towers, tall chimneys and irregularly-shaped roofs characterize Queen Anne houses, of which the Haas Lilienthal House is the most famous representative; rotunda corner windows are very present in Italianate-style houses; the Gothic revival gives pride of place to geminated bays and crenellations; while the Eastlake style emphasizes verticality through the use of astonishing prefabricated wooden ornaments. In a city that imposed the use of brick in its business district, as well as iron shutters and curtains to protect against fire, it's easy to understand why these wooden houses were relegated to the hills. But never mind, because with the advent of the legendary Cable Cars, the city's hills were almost flattened! Nob Hill and Liberty Hill are full of these Victorian masterpieces.
The 19th century also saw the creation of the city's two great campuses: Berkeley and Stanford. The former was long dubbed "the New Athens of the West", with its monumental neoclassical buildings lining the city's chalk-lined axes; while the latter, with its red-tiled, locally-tiled buildings organized around arcaded courtyards, was inspired by the missions. A masterpiece of landscape architecture, Golden Gate Park is one of the world's largest urban green spaces. In 1894, it hosted the Midwinter Fair, which was accompanied by the creation of 37 international pavilions and gardens, and the construction of a greenhouse whose multicolored glass dome is a masterpiece of Victorian architecture. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad opened up the city, which continued to grow in population and wealth, as evidenced by such fine mansions as the Gibbs House and Brown House designed by Willis Polk, and the Parthenon-inspired Bank of California. But the most impressive example of this eclecticism is the California State Capitol in Sacramento, whose neoclassical dome rises to 64 meters. The end of the 19th century also saw the advent of San Francisco's first skyscrapers, of which the brick-clad Mills Building designed by Daniel Burnham is the doyen.
Rebuild
The turn of the century was marked by a quest for architectural identity, as the city and region sought to strike the right balance between European influences and local traditions. The Mission Revival style was very popular. Pure volumes, curved gables, whitewashed walls and elegant arches characterize these buildings. The bell tower at Mills College, inspired by mission church steeples, was designed by Julia Morgan, the first woman to graduate from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the first to exploit the architectural potential of reinforced concrete... a material whose spectacular resistance was revealed by the terrible fires and earthquakes of 1906. While its use had been limited until then, it was decided to use it for the construction of the city's new buildings, while adorning their facades with stucco or terracotta so as not to clash with the few historic monuments still standing. Metal frameworks and glazed brick and earthenware structures, which also stood up well, became the new models to follow, while new technical solutions appeared: twisted iron elements were integrated into the concrete blocks to improve their strength, and steel beams clad the façades of buildings, playing both a decorative and an anti-seismic role, as on the US Geological Survey Building. These concerns seem far removed from those of the organizers of the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, who wanted to transform the city into an authentic imperial city for the occasion. Inspired by the City Beautiful movement, its promoters imagined monumental complexes resembling ancient temples. The Palace of Fine Arts, designed by Bernard Maybeck, is an ode to Antiquity, with its octagonal rotunda and Corinthian peristyle. But the most astonishing achievement of the period is, of course, the Civic Center, of which City Hall is the central edifice. Its columned drum and lantern-topped dome are inspired by Mansart's chapel at Les Invalides. The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, with its grandiose colonnades and arcades, is a perfect copy of the Hôtel de Salm (the Parisian original!) It was financed by the powerful Spreckels family, who also built the Spreckels Mansion, an immaculately white edifice dubbed "the Parthenon of the West Coast". At the same time, the city continued to embrace modernity with its skyscrapers. While the Hobart Building retains its neoclassical sculpted terracotta décor, the Hallidie Building sets the trend for glass curtain walls.
Modern effervescence
The 1920s saw the appearance of the first residential developments, such as the Bellaire Apartments on the famous Green Street, recognizable by their high, curvilinear porches and beautiful plaster ornamentation. The 1930s saw the construction of the city's two great landmarks: the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. At the time, the Bay Bridge was the longest steel footbridge in the world, spanning 7,200 meters! The latter was the highest and longest single-span suspension bridge in the world, spanning 2,700 meters in length and 30 meters in width... it is said that no less than 18,900 liters of paint were needed every year to maintain its legendary orange-red paintwork!
The 1930s also saw the advent of Art Deco, of which the Maritime Museum, modeled on an ocean liner with steel railings and portholes, is a proud representative. The Coit Tower, with its combination of antique style and pure Art Deco lines, is a sight to behold from the top of Telegraph Hill! If you had to choose just one building from the 1940s, it would be Frank Lloyd Wright's only building in San Francisco, the Spiral Building on Maiden Lane, now occupied by a ready-to-wear boutique... You'll have plenty of time to admire the clean lines of this curvaceous edifice!
By the end of the 1950s, the city was experiencing a new architectural effervescence, this time resolutely turned towards modernity. The Alcoa Building, designed by the famous SOM agency, boasts an astonishing curtain-wall facade superimposed with aluminum-coated steel girders, while the Embarcadero Building stands out from the city skyline thanks to the offset volumes of its 4 towers. But the most famous building of the era is undoubtedly the Transamerica Pyramid, a 260-metre-high pyramid whose isosceles tetrahedrons at the base serve both as decoration and earthquake protection. The famous Dragon Gate marking the entrance to the no less famous Chinatown district also dates from this period. With its pagoda-shaped roof and golden dragons, it's impossible to miss. The floating districts of Sausalito, with their houseboats linked by floating bridges; the rehabilitation of the legendary Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory into a commercial complex with a charming maze of passageways, patios and green terraces; or Sea Ranch, a residential development designed in the north of the city using redwood as the main material, with the aim of creating open, luminous volumes in the Bay Area Tradition style, are just some of the astonishing urban planning experiments carried out in the 1960s-1970s.
Since 1980
In 1985, San Francisco adopted the Downtown Plan, one of the most restrictive urban development plans in the country. Refusing to transform itself into a sprawling megalopolis, the city chose to protect its urban environment and heritage, to increase the number of green spaces and to regulate the construction of skyscrapers, limited to one per year, with a maximum height of 43 storeys and asymmetrical forms intended as an antithesis to the uniformity of the time. After the earthquakes and fires of 1989 and 1991, the brick buildings and houses were reinforced, and the subway tunnels made watertight and consolidated... But all the inhabitants knew that in the face of the Big One, no structure could resist. Despite this acute sense of precariousness, the city continues to transform itself. The greatest names in architecture have built astonishing museums here. The SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) was designed by Mario Botta, with its graphic juxtaposition of brick blocks and enormous truncated cylinder that resembles the eye of a cyclops, while its beautiful extension, with its façade made of fiberglass and Monterey silicate crystals integrated to reflect the light, was created by the Snøhetta agency. Renzo Piano designed the Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco, with its green roof whose two domes are covered with portholes, following the curves of the greenhouses and planetarium. Daniel Libeskind is responsible for the Contemporary Jewish Museum, which partly occupies a former power station, while the new De Young Museum, an astonishing monolithic volume punctuated by notches and hollows, is the work of Swiss duo Herzog & de Meuron. They are also responsible for the superb Dominus Winery in Napa Valley, with its exterior cladding of irregular basalt blocks enclosed in steel grids. This link between vineyards and architecture was initiated in the late 80s by Michael Graves and his monumental Clos Pegase winery, a contemporary reinterpretation of classical architecture. Skyscrapers continue to feed the city's skyline, like the torch-shaped SF Tower guiding travellers to the airport. As for the universities of Stanford and Berkeley, they are a laboratory for experimentation, imagining sustainable architecture with simple, uncluttered lines, astonishing environmental engineering systems and, above all, a human dimension!
