• Kohl Building
• All Saints' Episcopal Church
• Bransten house
• Temple Sherith Israel
• Freeman house
• St. Francis Hotel
• Shreve Building
• St. John's Presbyterian Church
• Jessie Street Substation
• Stuart Hall (formerly Arthur P. Hammond Mansion)
• Abbreviations

Restored by Polk after the fire, the ground floor has suffered the usual depredations. The entance portico is still a fine composition; the marble lobby is mostly original. The best part of the building is its ornate top (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 28).

No discussion of Willis Polk and his contributions to the "San Francisco Renaissance" should overlook his designs for and modification of 'San Francisco's comercial buildings. To list just a few, the Kohl or Howard (sic) Building at 400 Montgomery Street (1904), the Insurance Exchange, 433 California Street, the San Francisco Water Department, 425 Mason Street; the Hobart Building, 582 Market Street (1914), the Merchants' Exchange at California and Montgomery (1902), and the Mills Building (1908) (Alexander and Heig 2002: 339).

Hayward Building, 400 Montgomery Street, San Francisco. Designed 1900; built 1900-1901, Henry Meyers supervcising architect. Extant: minor alterations (Longstreth 1998: 432-33).

All Saints Episcopal Church at 1350 Waller Street was designed by Willis Polk. Its parishioneers provided food and medical care to many of the young people who were stranded here in the 1960s (Alexander and Heig 2002: 135)

All Saints Episcopal Church, at 1350 Waller Street, is another architectural gem (see page 135). This half-timbered cottage-like structure has an arched entry, above which is a small rose window fitted into the gable facing the street. It is a little surprising to learn that so modest a church carries out masses in the High Church manner. During the years in which All Saints stood at the very heart of hippiedom, it became the community church of the "flower children." Like many other churches in the city, it reached out to the thousands of young people who flocked to San Francisco with little but the clothing on their backs. The beloved rector, Reverend Leon Harris, sent out a letter reminding his flock that the church was not a private club, but rather a regiment of Christian soldiers dedicated to suppulying food, clothing, and comfort to those in need, "and hippies need these things." (Alexander and Heig 2002: 353).

All Saints' New Construction will reflect the original look of the Church in 1904. The color approximates the "slate gray" shingles that will be used. Not only will it provide handicapped access, it will also correct some serious construction errors that were the results of add-ons and other constructions over the years.

Beginning in the year 2003 through 2005, All Saints' Episcopal Church will celebrate its 100th Anniversary, first as mission of St. Luke's Episcopal Church beginning in 1903, and as a full parish in 1905. All Saints' Episcopal Church was founded by successful group of San Francisco professional people, as reflected in the many beautiful Victorians that today give character to the Haight Ashbury district. Meeting informally in 1900 in a small building on Oak Street the parishioners began to plan the spiritual development of the new Haight Ashbury neighborhood.

Initially, it was a mission of the no-longer extant St. Stephan's Church. After the rector of St. Stephen's, Fr. Edgar J. Lions died in 1903, the people interested in starting All Saints' Church, along with the clergy of Saint Luke's and the vestry of Saint Stephens decided to transfer its mission responsibility to St. Luke's according to documents kept at Saint Luke's Church.

In 1905 All Saints became a full parish. Its first rector was Canon Fr. W. Edward Hayes. The church building was first located on Masonic between Haight and Waller. It was moved in 1905 to its current location on Waller (Waller is one block above Haight) near Masonic because the parishioners did not like the noise of a then existing trolley line outside its front doors. During this move, which was accomplished in less than 30 days, the side aisles were added to the structure.

All Saints' Church has a colorful history, both in its early days and at the height of the Haight's "flower children era" in the late 1960's. It served as a headquarters for the renowned "Diggers" during that era. It became Anglo-Catholic in 1949 when the legendary Fr. Leon Harris became its Rector (All Saints' Church).

Ernest [Reuben Lilienthal] and Bella [Sloss]'s daughter, Florine married Edward Bransten (originally Brandenstein), the owner of MJB Coffee. The Bransten Mansion (8) (1904), a brick veneer over wood Colonial Revival designed by Herman Barth, is located at 1735 Franklin. The Branstens bought 1701 Franklin and 1818 California, providing them with a lovely family compound with gardens (Wiley 2000: 272). Registered Historical Landmark No. 126, City and County of San Francisco. This house was built in 1904 for Edward and Florine Bransten. Architect: Herman Barth (1868-1923) (Plaque).

Temple Sherith Israel (15) (1904) at 2266 California was founded by Polish Jews in 1854 after an irreconcilable split with their German brethren over who would control kosher slaughtering. Designed by Albert Pissis in the Romanesque style, the building survived the 1906 earthquake and, as one of the few remaining public buildings, housed the superior court for a number of years. It was here that Boss Abe Ruef was tried for extortion (see page 61). The ark within dates from the construction of the congregation's first temple in 1854, and the building houses a particularly fine library (Wiley 2000: 274).

Temple Sherith Israel (Loyal Remnant of Israel). Albert Pissis served as the architect of this brownstone domed Temple whose cornerstone was laid February 22, 1904. The synagogue was consecrated on September 24, 1905 on which occasion the principal address was delivered by Jacob Voorsanger.

Suffering only $1,000 damage to the roof during the 1906 earthquake, this building received public attention when it served as the courthouse for the Ruef-Schmitz trials (Hansen 1995: 111).

Temple of Congregation Sherith-Israel underwent repairs after the earthquake. The temple became the temporary quarters of the San Francisco Superior Court, and Abe Ruef's graft trial was held there (Hansen and Condon 1989: 129).

At the northeast corner of California and Webster Streets is Temple Sherith Israel, which can trace its origins to Gold Rush times. Five successive temples preceded the present one. This synagogue, in the Romanesque style, with its mighty dome and huge rose window, was dedicated on Washington's birthday, 1904. Temple Sherith Israel was one of the few great public buildings to survive the 1906 disaster intact. As a result, it was used temporarily as a court house and for other civic functions until the city was rebuilt. Political boss Abe Ruef, Mayor Eugene Schmitz and the entire Board of Supervisors were tried for corruption here in 1907. Rabbi Nieto gloomily watched the trials, which he felt were a profanation of his holy temple.

Albert Pissis, architect of the Flood Building, the Emporium, and the Hibernia Bank, designed this massive edifice in the shape of a giant cube with huge pendentive arches supporting a dome some ninety feet above the floor. Today Sherith Israel, especially noted for its fine library, is a place of prayer, study, and fellowship for a large congregation. It is California Landmark #42 (Alexander and Heig 2002: 299).

Another work by the Coxheads, this one a large Colonial Revival house of strong character in a suitable setting (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 211).

This manorial house derives much of its visual strength from the bold statement of the gambrel dormers. The lath garden houses along the east edge of the property are worth noticing, and the wall on Ridge St. is fine street furniture (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 262).

Gutted in the 1906 fire, the hotel was restored and enlarged by the first architects. In 1913 an addition on the Post Street end altered its symmetrical E shape. Typical of the Renaissance Revival style then in vogue, the building is treated like a stretched Italian palazzo with an ornate cornice and a ground floor arcade. Wide, rusticated bands running up the mid-section tie the top and bottom together. The ground floor arcade extends its influence across the sidewalk to include the light standards, presumably designed by Bliss and Faville, and the boxed trees (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 6).

The first St. Francis Hotel, the tallest building in town, was made of several pre-fabricated buildings put together. Guests were fed in a tent with an annex to accomodate the overflow (Alexander and Heig 2002: 51).

Commanding the upper, northwestern corner of Alamo Square, at 1198 Fulton, is one of the best-known Victorians in the City, an exuberant blend of Italianate and Stick styles with a monumental square tower rising above it (see pages 122-123). It was designed in 1882 by Henry Geilfuss, a native of Germany, who built many surviving houses in the area, as well as St. Mark's Lutheran Church at 1135 O-Farrell. Victorian architecture buffs make a great point of recognizing Geilfuss's designs.

The Fulton Street house was built for William Westerfeld, a German confectioner and baker...in 1895, the house was appraised for $15,000 and sold to John Mahony, a building contractor who built the St. Francis Hotel, the post-quake Palace Hotel, the Greek Theater and other buildings on the UC Berkeley campus (Alexander and Heig 2002: 237-38).

Templeton Crocker and his sister Jennie fell heir to the St. Francis Hotel, and on several occasions were ready to sell it, only to have the buyers, after making improvements, go into receivership. Each time, the Crocker heirs got to keep their down payments and got back their hotel, with its new improvements (Alexander and Heig 2002: 304).

For festive Saturday nights the big hotels all offered tea dancing and dinner dancing in their ballrooms. When radio was still a novelty, some hotels, like the Palace and the St. Francis, offered dance music sent by "wireless" from New York or Detroit (Alexander and Heig 2002: 382)

(Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 16).

Completed in 1905 and rebuilt after the fire. Steel frame construction with brick curtain walls sheathed in Colusa sandstone. In composition, a variation of the three part vertical block with differentiated end bays, having expanded transitional sections at the base and capital. Renaissance/Baroque ornamentation. Together with the Head Building (R158) across the street, also by Curlett, the Shreve Building is the tallest building on Grant Avenue. Centrally located between Market Street and the Chinatown Gate it punctuates the skyline at just the right place, defining the historic heart of the retail district. The quality of its materials and its carved detail enhance the prominence it achieves by its size, location, and function as a focal point. The two lower floors are occupied by Shreve's monumental salesroom with black marble Ionic columns and fine bronze entrances. The marquees at the entrances have been removed. A (Corbett 1979: 134).

The interior of Coxhead's last Shingle Style church is much starker than his earlier ones, but is climaxed by the wonderful clerestoried tower (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 218).

Ernest Coxhead's last Shingle Style church has an unusually stark interior culminating in a clerestoried pyramidal tower. Its entrance arch is truly groovy (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 210).

Also known as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Stevenson St. Substation, Central S, this one-story, brick and terra cotta, Classical Revival style building (Landmark No. 87), with a towering, arched doorway and Romanesque detailing is of historic significance owing to its architecture and engineering. It served as an energy utilities substation until 1924, but is currently vacant and slated to be part of the new home of the Jewish Museum (National Register of Historic Places: California, San Francisco)

In 1998 The Jewish Museum San Francisco commissioned internationally acclaimed architect Daniel Libeskind to design its new building. Libeskind's striking design preserves and expands a former power substation designed by distinguished architect Willis Polk in 1907, transforming it into a unique 21st-century museum in the heart of what has become the San Francisco Bay Area's foremost arts and cultural district. The expansion of this historic building will allow The Magnes Museum the additional space necessary to expand its mission and programming. The Magnes Museum looks forward to opening its new building in 2005 (The Magnes Museum: New Buildings).

The finest and the first of a number of designs by Polk for P. G. & E. substations in northern California. These widely publicized designs served as prototypes for work by other architects for the same company. Such "beautification" of industrial structures was an aspect of the City Beautiful Movement. The design of this building was a 1905 remodel of an 1881 structure which burned in February 1906 and again in April of 1906. It was rebuilt in 1907 and enlarged in 1909. The building is a steel frame and reinforced concrete structure with a steel truss roof. Its main brick facade is a modified vault in composition, with Renaissance/Baroque ornamentation in cream colored, matte glazed terra cotta. Its finest feature is a sculptural group over the smaller of two main entrances consisting of four cherubs with gourds and garlands of fruit beneath a torch. The facade sets up a tension between carefully wrought, sometimes delicate terra cotta ornament and a vast wall of rough red industrial brick. Until demolition of adjacent structures for Yerba Buena Center in recent years, this grand facade was hidden on a blind alley in the middle of a block of taller buildings. This building was initially slated for demolition, as well, but now figures prominently in plans for revitalization of the area. A (Corbett 1979: 76).

The Pacific Gas & Electric Co. substation, 222-226 Jessie Street, tucked away in a dead-end alley between Market and Mission, is one of San Francisco's few great examples of the architectural possibilities of the brick facade. Originally built in 1881, and subsequently enlarged twice, the substation was damaged in a fire in February, 1906, and almost destroyed in the earthquake and fire of April, 1906. Rebuilt in 1907, the building owes its present character to Willis Polk, at that time head of the San Francisco office of D. H. Burnham and Company, the Chicago firm that had prepared the 1905 plan for the conversion of San Francisco to a model of the "city beautiful" along the lines of Paris and Washington. As a result, it is not altogether surprising that the architectural ideas of Polk and Burnham should have been applied to an electric substation in a South-of-Market alley.

This noble structure is a simple (but quite sophisticated) exercise in the development of balance, line, and texture. Though the eye focuses on the ornamental, vertical, and symmetrical piercings and moldings, it is the horizontal line of the rough, red wall that catches the breath. Yet, of course, it is the elaborate applied inventions that make the plain surface more than just another brick wall. This is a building that many San Franciscans have never seen, and it is worth going out of one's way to look at it (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 93; 96-97).

Next door [to the second James C. Flood mansion] to the west is the austere red brick Stuart Hall, formerly the mansion of railroad and lumber magnate Arthur P. Hammond, built in 1905 (Alexander and Heig 2002: 307).

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