Sam Spade's San Francisco

My great-grandfather passed down family stories of nineteenth-century San Francisco. One of his stories was how impressive the Palace Hotel was to San Franciscans of the time. It could be seen from across the Bay and from all over town. It was the most elegantly appointed building in San Francisco.

My grandfather used to tell me about the grandeur of the SP Building down at the foot of Market Street. It was one of the most massive and tallest buildings in San Francisco in his time. For him it was a sign of the enduring strength of Southern Pacific Railroad. The other building he thought was exceptional in San Francisco was the main post office building where he worked. The post office was on 7th Street and although today the beau arts stone building is no longer a post office, it is still in the hands of the federal government. It is now the U. S. Court of Appeals.

Until the mid sixties the tallest building in San Francisco was the Shell Building (built in 1929) at 100 Bush, on the corner of Bush and Battery. It is an impressive stone-facade art deco building. While it is far from even being among the taller skyscrapers in the City today, it is still a magnificent example of art deco architecture and is well worth a stroll through the lobby.

Current generations think in terms of the TransAmerica Pyramid and the black monolithic BankAmerica Building, but all that is soon to change. Time marches on, folks.

The tower planned for the massive new Transbay Center will likely rise well above the Pyramid's 850 feet and may even come close to 1,000 feet. The Transbay Center project will replace the existing terminal at 1st and Mission Streets.

Thank God for that! The building has become an empty cavern populated only by the homeless, the mentally ill and drug addicts looking for a place to shoot-up. It is an embarrassment to San Francisco.

In place of the present building, the City's tallest skyscraper will rise upwards of possibly a thousand feet. The height has not yet been decided upon and both Transbay Center project team and the San Francisco Planning Department are working on that issue.

The plan calls for CalTrain to excavate a tunnel through an alignment beneath Second Street and lay track from its current terminal at 4th and Townsend up to the new Transbay Center. Eventually CalTrain hopes to convert to high-speed rail with direct service to Los Angeles.

The plan also calls for the development of an entirely new neighborhood with some 3,400 residential units. Thirty-five percent of those units will be classified as low-income affordable housing. The balance will be sold for as much as they can get for them, which is the way of the world.

There will be 1.2 million square feet of office, hotel and commercial space added to the immediate area. In addition to CalTrain, eight transit systems, including MUNI, BART, Golden Gate Transit, SamTrans and Greyhound Lines will all be centered in the new facility.

Visit these sites to learn more about the project:
Transbay Transit Center Project
California High-Speed Rail Project
Transbay Development Plan (.pdf document)
Certified EIR
Transbay Streetscape and Open Pace Plan
Project Project Timeline to Completion
Frequently Asked Questions about the Transbay Transit Center Project
Join email list for future announcements and information about the project
San Francisco Planning Department's City Design Group