Musings on Art Deco and Modernism in the San Francisco Bay Area
Rain has finally descended upon a parched San Francisco, casting a perfect gloomy backdrop just in time for this year's Noir City Film Festival. Aficionados of the dark film genre are looking forward to this year's program, where San Francisco plays a role in some of the films, starting tonight at the Castro Theatre. Both familiar and long-gone buildings and… Continue reading Streamline Moderne gem a quiet star in “Dark Passage” at Noir City Film Festival
The El Rey Theatre, the former movie palace that still towers over Ocean Avenue and parts of Ingleside Terraces, is turning 80 next month. To celebrate the anniversary, the Voice of Pentecost, which bought the building in 1977, is hosting a fund-raiser, and the organizers will be showing the same film that was featured during… Continue reading The El Rey Theatre to come back as a movie palace for a night
Cole Porter please forgive me for messing up your lyrics, but last month I had a kind of late 1920s, early 1930s week in New York. After seeing the Broadway revival of "Anything Goes," I still can't get Porter's witty lyrics out of my head. And they meld so well with many of the city's glorious… Continue reading It’s de-lightful, it’s de-lovely, it’s Deco in New York
Albert Pissis was one of San Francisco's most respected architects from the Gilded Age to the post-fire building boom. To me, he is also one of the era's more quietly fascinating figures in local architecture, described after his death as having been a man of "dominating will power," "naturally reserved," but frank in expressing his opinion, even to "the… Continue reading The mystery of the Gilded Age architect and his artist brother
Let's face it. You can't really lug a serious book about architecture to the beach, or even on the bus. Typically they are either hefty, hardback tomes, made even heavier by glossy, full-color pages of photography of the work being discussed, or they can venture into dry, academic treatises that often aren't really fun to… Continue reading Some good architecture reads for spring
The Roaring 1920s in America were happy-go-lucky days of wild times, illegal speakeasies and dances like the Jitterbug and the Charleston. But fueling all that crazy joy was a stock market bubble that ended, as we know now, in the Great Depression. But before the market crash of 1929, most U.S. cities were seeing a huge… Continue reading Magnificent Deco apartment houses live on in SF
The demolition of the front of the Transbay Terminal began today, with the repetitive swinging of the wrecking ball, which the contractors call "Big Red." The Transbay Joint Powers Authority, in one of the oddest press releases I have ever seen, heralded the news, saying that the wreckers Evans Brothers, Inc. "dropped the historic first wrecking ball on the front… Continue reading Wrecking ball starts demo of Transbay Terminal
San Francisco may be famous for its Victorian row houses and over-the-top Queen Annes, but it is also home to one of the most notable examples of a building in the Streamline Moderne style. The ship-like Bathhouse building, which sits in its berth at Aquatic Park is a great example of the style, which became more popular in… Continue reading Aquatic Park is Streamline Sublime
Today, September 26, is the birthday of architect Timothy Pflueger. Since he was born in 1892, he clearly would not be alive today (it would be his 118th birthday), but I always wonder what else he would have accomplished if he had lived beyond his 54 years. It is amazing to consider how much work he… Continue reading Happy Birthday Timothy Pflueger!
Friday afternoon, just under two thousand people showed up at the Transbay Terminal for several tours and a sad farewell before it closes for good next week. The Transbay Joint Powers Authority and Caltrans did some last-minute sprucing up and managed to get most of the homeless people out of the terminal for a round of one hour tours through the… Continue reading Goodbye Transbay Terminal
Timothy Pflueger Blog 