Architecture and Design
Articles about architecture and design in San Francisco.
San Francisco is rightly famous for many of its building and structures, visitors are generally well-aware of many of its architectural landmarks and are determined to see them in person. The city’s brightly-painted Victorian houses, the concrete Transamerica Pyramid, our Chinatown (the first to use Chinese features and designs) and, of course, the Golden Gate…
The 1906 Great Fire is one of the most cataclysmic moments in the history of San Francisco. In many respects it’s the big “before and after” event for the city. Some buildings survived – Union Square’s St Francis Hotel, the Flood Mansion and the Fairmont Hotel, both on Nob Hill, and the Ferry Building were…
A Chinatown is defined as an ethnic enclave of people of Chinese background, that is outside China itself. From the 1830’s onwards a large, and growing, number of them have popped up all over the world, in cities like New York, London, Los Angeles and Melbourne. The oldest in the Western world is considered to…
Ever since the late nineteenth century San Franciscans had dreamed of a bridge across the Golden Gate, the narrow strait that separate the northern and southern sides of the entrance to San Francisco Bay. However, the practical difficulties of building a Golden Gate Bridge seemed insuperable at the time, and the crossing stayed a fever…