Market Street, San Francisco (No. 2)
The first Hearst building was destroyed by the earthquake and subsequent fire of 1906 and the decision was made to rebuild. Phoebe Apperson Hearst commissioned the New York architectural firm of Kirby, Petit & Green to design the new structure. The initial thought was to construct a grand 26 story building topped with a 1-story copper lantern balcony on a roof of copper tiles covered in gold flecke. Inside the lantern would be a chiming clock. The City decided to implement a coordinated height plan along the Market Street corridor in the aftermath of the near total destruction of the buildings and ruled that the Hearst Building could be no taller than 12 stories above the ground floor.
Plans were completed in November of 1909 and construction progressed into 1911. Meanwhile, Hearst’s Examiner newspaper was being printed in a temporary home. The new Hearst building was in a Spanish Revival style construction, with Tennessee Pink marble on the lower floors and a terra cotta façade reaching to the roof parapet.
On September 11, 1911 the San Francisco Examiner moved into its newly completed home… the 13 story Hearst Building you see today at the corner of Third & Market Streets. This intersection was to become the heart of San Francisco and became known as “newspaper angle” because of the odd shaped corner configuration and because buildings on the opposite corners of the intersection housed the Call and the Chronicle newspapers.
In 1938, famed architect Julia Morgan was retained by Hearst to complete a remodel of the Hearst Building’s exterior entry way, the lobby on the ground floor and the parapet roof structure. Her work included the installation of a field of 20 cast bronze medallions containing fanciful animals above the front door, the addition of patriotic red white & blue lighting around the medallions, a crest above the front entry, an elaborate and beautiful lobby interior and updated elevator interiors. Her work remains unchanged today and is visible to the passerby.
When this sandstone and brick Richardson Romanesque building (DeYoung Building) was completed in 1889, it was San Francisco's first skyscraper and the tallest building on the west coast. Designed for the San Francisco Chronicle by the Chicago firm of Burnham & Root, the building shared newspaper corner with the Hearst and Call buildings as well as Lotta's Fountain. (Burnham & Root also designed the Mills Building another early San Francisco skyscraper.)
In 1905, according to Chronicle columnist, John King, the four-story bronze clock tower was destroyed when it was ignited by skyrockets launched during a mayoral victory parade. (See Mr. King's article for a chronology and critique.) The building, after surviving the 1906 Earthquake and Fire with major damage, was rebuilt by Willis Polk who ran the San Francisco office of Burnham & Root.
The Hobart Building was completed in 1914 after only eleven months, which led to accusations that it had been constructed with a degree of recklessness, and was at the time the second tallest building in the city, with 21 floors, and 87 m (285 ft). Its unusual shape was dictated by the site, which is an asymmetric polygon, and since a neighboring structure was torn down in 1967, exposing one flank, it is now even more idiosyncratic and striking. Its sculpted terra cotta exterior with Baroque ornamentation, and handcrafted brass and Italian marble interior are a noted example of neoclassical architecture.
The 28-story, 115.22 m (378.0 ft) Shell building was designed by George W. Kelham and built in 1929, in the architectural style of Gothic Moderne, Moderne and Art Deco.
The Matson building was constructed in 1922-24 to serve as the headquarters of the Matson Navigation Company, then the largest shipping and transportation company between the West Coast and Hawaii. Architects Bliss & Faville designed the Renaissance Revival building. The sixteen-story building is divided into three sections; the lower and upper sections feature extensive ornamentation, giving the building a column-like appearance. The outside of the building is clad in terra cotta, which is also used for the building's decorative elements.
