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RECORD Recommends: Buildings off the Beaten Path
With its combination of innovative contemporary projects and historic architecture, San Francisco boasts one of the richest built environments of any West-Coast city. And in addition to well-known buildings, our panel pointed out some of the Bay Area’s unique architectural gems that frequently fly under visitors’ radar.
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Jay Sweet suggests visiting the Dutch Windmill in Golden Gate Park. Originally built to pump water into the park, it is located near the park entrance closest to the ocean. The Marin Headlands, just across the Golden Gate Bridge, also contain a few impressive structures, including the Point Bonita Lighthouse. Owen Kennerly also recommends visiting “the amazing derelict World War II concrete artillery placements dug into the ridges on the route out there.”
Also frequently overlooked by tourists, the Paramount Theatre in downtown Oakland is fully restored art-deco movie palace designed by Timothy Pflueger. The Paramount still screens films and hosts live musical performances. Take a tour on the first Saturday of every month, including May 2nd during the AIA convention. For another unconventional destination, Kennerly suggests the Glen Park BART station. He describes the 1974 transit facility, designed by Ernest Born, as “Logan’s Run meets Zardoz.”
Back in San Francisco proper, our panel shared some favorite corners of the city, such as the San Francisco Art Institute on Russian Hill. Kennerly recommends entering through Bakewell and Brown’s cloister, passing through the Diego Rivera Gallery, to arrive on the roof of Paffard Keatinge-Clay’s 1963 concrete addition, which has a great view and a café.
For a distillation of San Francisco’s hilly urban planning, Mark Harbick says not to miss the Filbert Steps, which run from the base of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, to the waterfront. He recommends starting from the bottom and walking up a “meandering stairway that runs through a beautifully maintained garden and a quirky collection of gold-rush era cottages.” Douglas Tom seconds this as a way to see the city on a “microscopic level,” and he says to keep an eye out for the flock of wild parrots made famous in the documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.
The South Park neighborhood was also noted by several members of the panel as a low profile, but essential piece of San Francisco. Reclaimed by artists in the 1970s after a long period of decline, this neighborhood became the epicenter of the Web 1.0 revolution in the 1990s. Small dot-com firms filled the affordable and flexible office spaces around the quarter’s namesake park. After a post-bubble slump, the park and the neighborhood have picked back up again.
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