When it comes to municipal architecture, San Francisco has bragging rights for having one of the most acclaimed Civic Centers in the United States. In the National Trust Guide – San Francisco, author Peter Booth Wiley acknowledged, “Its Civic Center – a cluster of government buildings centered on a restored City Hall whose dome reaches higher than the Capitol in Washington D.C. – is the finest and most complete example of municipal buildings in the French neoclassical style anywhere in the country.”
The San Francisco City Hall was built by Arthur Brown, a graduate of L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he studied classical architecture. “Brown’s design for City Hall was inspired by the gilded lead-plated dome and spire of Les Invalides in Paris,” the City Mayors Web site explained. “San Francisco City Hall, which opened in 1916 after the old City Hall was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, is one of the best examples of Beaux Arts architecture in the world, and it is considered to have one of the most important interior spaces in the United States.”
“The dome of San Francisco City Hall is the fifth largest in the world,” City Mayors reported. “It was originally covered with gold leaf gilded copper. Because the gilding was applied incorrectly, the copper eventually took on its familiar green patina. Today’s restored finish is gold leaf on a special paint.”
Another example of Beaux Arts is the Emporium department store with its signature dome that is similar to the one at San Francisco City Hall. The Emporium was designed by Albert Pissis, who also studied at the L’Ecole des Beaux Arts and is credited with introducing the Classical Revival style of architecture to San Francisco. When it opened in 1896, the Emporium was considered “the grandest mercantile building in the world,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Today, the Emporium is part of the 1.5-million-square-foot Westfield San Francisco Centre, which features five floors of retail shopping, including Bloomingdale’s department store. As part of a major renovation, the 500,000-pound dome, consisting of eight ribs and 800 pieces of glass, was completely refurbished using a coating system from Tnemec. “They wanted a coating system to cover the dome’s exterior zinc-clad metal frame,” explained coating consultant Carl Bowers. “After extensive adhesion testing, they decided on a superior coating system that included Series 1078 Fluoronar Metallic.”
The project specified a prime coat of Series 394 PerimePrime, a moisture-cured, micaceous iron oxide (MIO) zinc-filled urethane; an intermediate coat of Series 1075 Endura-Shield II, an aliphatic acrylic polyurethane; and a finish coat of Series 1078 Fluoronar Metallic, a high-solids fluoropolymer coating that offers an ultra-durable metallic finish. “This coating system is perfect for landmark projects and areas where maintenance painting is prohibitive,” Bowers noted.
A new glass skylight over the Centre’s Market Street corridor was shop-primed with Series 90-97 Tneme-Zinc, a zinc-rich aromatic urethane. PerimePrime was used as a field primer to touch up the welds, followed by an intermediate coat of Endura-Shield II and a finish coat of Fluoronar Metallic.
Beaux Arts is one of several architectural styles referenced in San Francisco Preservation Bulletin 18, which traces the city’s principal architectural styles from Greek Revival dating to the 1950s, to International Style featuring the absence of ornamentation and the use of refined details and proportions. According to the Preservation Bulletin, “Gothic and Romanesque architectural detailing was favored on early buildings, but by 1900, Classic Revival forms were popular. The design formula was based on the classical column with a base of two, three or four stories with decorative elements that cap the construction. Later, Art Deco high-rise (architecture) had sleeker, stepped profiles at the upper stories and stylized ornament from non-classical sources. By the early fifties the use of any ornament was shunned and the use of glass as a cladding material had gained popularity with the International Style.”
In Guide to Architecture in San Francisco and Northern California, author David Gebhard observed, “Perhaps because of its seaside association with the Mediterranean, California has borrowed heavily from the Romanesque traditions of Italy, southern France and Spain. Especially in northern California, German Romanesque examples were also used for a number of late 19th century churches. In these buildings the unbroken masonry wall surfaces predominate. Windows are round-arched or circular, and roofs are often tiled and low pitched. Within, barrel vaults are often joined by low drums and domes. The ornamentation in stone, cast stone and terra cotta is based upon specific Romanesque examples.”