fallen monuments

Bolivar

Flood Building

I'm not sure how my friends feel, but this week's adventure struck me as unpredictable, poorly planned and with an outcome that shocked the hell out of me.

Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. The vases up top mimic those on the Palace of Fine Arts.                  

I had intended this week to explore Beaux-Arts architecture in San Francisco. 

A brief definition of the style: 

"Of or relating to an architectural style originating in France in the late 19th century and characterized by classical forms, symmetry, rich ornamentation, and a grand scale."

where's the side of this building?

In 1893, in celebration of the rise of Industrialism, Chicago hosted their World's Columbian Exposition, a world's fair that dramatically influenced architecture and fine art. Daniel Burnham, one of the chief architects, was hired to design what he considered to be the most beautiful city, based on the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and when that was a raging success, San Francisco decided to follow suit.

Chicago World's Fair

Daniel Burnham

A note on Daniel Burnham: According to PBS, "His work sought to reconcile things often thought opposite. The practical and the ideal, business and art, and capitalism and democracy. At the center of it all was the idea of vibrant urban community."

As the story goes, he was hired to come here and redesign the entire city. He wanted to put in a major boulevard that led to the city's center. He wanted the buildings to rival the most beautiful ones in Paris and Washington DC. 

Building began but was quickly curtailed by the earthquake. Because this city is run by local proprietors, the rebuilding focused more on getting business back up and running, and less about Burnham's City Beautiful.

Nevertheless, there are still old relics from this era, buildings that really speak to opulence and ornamentation, and since this city is already so freaking beautiful, I thought it would be fun to focus on only one style of aesthetic perfection.

Barbary Coast plaque, maintained by Microsoft.

Well... that's where things went terrible wrong. 

Our plan for the day was to walk to the Hibernia Bank building and then over to Civic Center, and somewhere on the way to stop for lunch and Pisco Punch. 

I have been reading Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, a dictionary he compiled after the Civil War. Known for his scathing wit and dry sense of humor, he was a very formidable character in Old San Francisco. He had a description for Brandy that was all too impressive:

"Brandy: a cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave, and four parts clarified Satan. Dose, a headfull all the time. Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of heroes. Only a hero will venture to drink it."

The girls were quickly enthralled to discover just how picturesque this city is once you really start to look up. Too often to we find ourselves in autopilot, navigating crowds, looking down, looking at our phones, to forget all that surrounds us. Me, being the natural space cadet that I am, seldom suffer from such a problem, but I did relish in seeing friends notice things for the first time.

Golden Gate Theater

Cameras out, we found ourself stopping often. Too often... By now, we had entered the Tenderloin, or "little Saigon", San Francisco's most violent area. Known for robbery and aggravated assault, I'm always on the defense here... well... until today. Trying to offer insights regarding the buildings, we all got too absorbed in our photo taking to notice the groups of people circling in. Thankfully, Spencer corralled us out of there, and not a minute too soon. 

We made it to Hibernia Bank, at 1 Jones Street, a gorgeous old bank now under a much disputed form of reconstruction. Begun in 1859 as a bank for the people, it was rebuilt by Albert Pisses (In an style intended to "capture the hearts of San Franciscans") and completed just before the earthquake. But from 1908 on, this building was in a long state of decay.

Quick note regarding the earthquake. With the safe compromised, the city needed some kind of protection to thwart robbers. They hired a bunch of large armed men to camp out on the front steps. 

These guys.

Since then, it became a police precinct, but has been abandoned since 2000. Purchased in 2008, the new owner wants to renovate the building for private offices, but the city is fighting back, adamant that the beauty of its interior be protected.

In front of the bank, I shared another Ambrose Bierce quote. 

"Abatis: rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside." The building was surrounded, and therefore blocked by a large wooden wall. 

While we were discussing this, we were oblivious to the fact that Spencer was getting in an increasingly heated confrontation with a woman demanding money from us.

(Claustrophobic and stressed out, we ducked into this Thai bar for quick libations.)

Our next stop: Civic Center:

City Hall was built in 1915, in time for the Panama Pacific International Exposition held here, by John Bakewell and Arthur Brown Jr. It was intended to rival Paris and to outsize the Capital Building in Washington. After the 1989 earthquake, the dome was retrofitted to sit atop rollers. Should another earthquake strike, it will just roll around. 

The gold leafing was an addition, a status symbol of the opulence of the dot com era in the 1990s.

City Hall

This is an interesting plaza in that it has always been the center of San Francisco's liberal politics. It was here that the massive anti-McCarthy protests were held, where riots happened when Harvey Milk's murderer was given a very lenient sentencing, where the first gay-marriage was conducted. It was also here that the treaty ending the Pacific War with Japan was signed.

Spencer informed us that years ago, there used to be pools in between the trees, but after a lack of upkeep they were drained, becoming a great spot for skateboarders. Obviously, no city likes skaters-  the pools were filled.

When looking at City Hall, to the left is the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the first building built for the PPIE and the last to still exist. It was given to the city by the Exposition, a $1 million dollar present.

Now, there are a million little random facts I could share with you regarding architectural decision making or even juxtaposing these old relics against their neighboring modern skyscrapers, but what really interests me is the sheer Americaness of that experience. Here we were on a quest to explore and enjoy these neglected symbols of opulence while being completely surrounded by the city's most neglected. 

Me, sitting on Abe Lincoln's lap, clearly NOT political.

Though I have worked very long and hard in life to not buy into one political party over another, nor to claim to actually know anything, I have to admit that that simple juxtaposition was overwhelming. With this city's great push to evolve, with the huge, heavy handed impact of gentrification, it's shocking to see these impressively large and spectacular buildings left in such a state of decay. Concurrently, it's terrible to think that these buildings should be renovated in order to celebrate their beauty, when, to do that, would case massive evictions (for the city's most impoverished) and another area overrun with the wealthy. Also, like I mentioned in my last entry, I find it terrible fascinating to watch symbols of our history fall, while also celebrating the need for such things TO fall. 

The day felt like a bust to me. I was depressed at my priviledge, at my temporary blindness to the situation, my desperate desire to avoid what was happening on the sidewalks in favor of pretty walls. And though I don't want to pick sides, I have to say that today was truly the most poignant and happenstance example I think I could have experienced of America's wealth differential. While the rich keep getting richer, they just abandon their "garbage" for the rest to move into.

Beaux-Arts is an art movement from over a century ago, from a competely different world, and one that I don't think anyone would dare rejuvenate. Beauty for beauty's sake is a wasteful and dangerous thing.

One last note: we did finally find a glass of Pisco Punch, a signature San Francisco drink at this bar in Hayes Valley called Absinthe. Pisco is a Peruvian brandy, and in the end of the 19th century, it was blended with pineapple juice and simple syrup by Duncan Nicol, on the spot where the Transamerica Building now stands. Despite being a famed mixology bar, our bartender didn't know the drink. Using his phone, he found a recipe, and though delicious, it didn't quite add up to the description written by Rudyard Kipling:"compounded of the shavings of cherub's wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset and the fragments of lost epics of dead masters."