Dwelling: What if the Willis Tower, the...

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Then & Now: From Whale Mansion To Mega Tower

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Friday, February 1, 2013, by Alex Bevk

Public spaces change fast here in San Francisco, and for better or worse, it can be pretty crazy when you see what the City used to look like. Every week, we'll bring you Then & Now, a comparison of historic photos of the Bay Area with current views from the same perspective. Have a suggestion for a photo comparison that looks totally different (or shockingly the same)? Drop us a tip in the Curbed Inbox or leave a comment after the jump.

Quick note: See that vertical green bar in the middle of the then and now photos? You can move it horizontally to see the photos side by side.

[Then photo: SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY/ Now photo: Ian Brown]

We didn't touch on historic whale Adolph Sutro this week since we've covered his land holdings so much in the past, but one lesser-known whale mansion was constructed by his heirs. Hint: it used to be where a very famous tower now stands.

Built in the 1930's by Adolph Sutro's grandson, Adolph Gilbert Sutro, the house was for him and his mother. Sutro Jr. was a daredevil, working at some point for the Wright Brothers, and the first pilot's license in the U.S. for a water plane. Known as La Avanzada, the house had lots of stained glass windows, tiled fireplaces, and giant wood beams. The Sutros lived there until 1948 when the house and surrounding land was sold to the American Broadcasting Company for $125,000 as a site for their new television station transmitter site, with a 580 ft tower.

The base of the Sutro Tower under construction, Sutro Mansion in the background, 1971 [Photo: Sutro Tower]

The mansion served as the broadcasting studios until 1953, when it became the equipment facility. Broadcasters felt a new tower with a stronger signal was needed, and they decided to build the now-iconic 977 ft tower on the mansion site. Part of the agreement with the city was to remove the house, since they considered it a fire hazard and was already a favorite for vandals. All that remains now is one of the stained glass window rescued from the Mansion's library.

Sutro Tower [Photo: Bhautik Joshi]

· Sutro Tower and Mount Sutro [Sutrotower.org]
· Sutro Tower to Replace Historic Mountain Villa [Oakland Tribune]
· History of Sutro Tower [Sutro Tower]

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Turf Wars: Coit Tower Menu Features Fried Chicken, Halibut, Followed By Well-Whipped Hysteria

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, March 15, 2012, by Philip Ferrato

Jon Golinger and the Telegraph Hill Neighbors refueled the torches they've been burning for the Coit Tower murals with news of a private dinner held last year in the tower. While no one disputes the murals need conservation, no one seems to be looking at actual pictures of the event, a dinner that had been auctioned at a Rec & Parks fundraiser and catered by chef Tyler Florence and event planner Laurie Arons. Adam Gottstein, whose grandfather Bernard Zakheim was one of the tower muralists, didn't bother look at the event pictures at the Laurie Arons Blog, giving the party a reckless, inebriated slant when he complained to the Arts Commission, pitchfork and pike at hand:

Holding private unsupervised functions complete with cocktails and burning candles within inches of these irreplaceable and already-damaged murals presents the possibility of obvious and potentially disastrous effects on the historic murals.

We couldn't agree more, except there were no "candles within inches," those are tea lights floating in water, in hurricanes, and feet away from any painted surfaces. Not exactly incendiary. The "candles" on the stairs are plastic (photo at Arons' blog) with batteries and LED bulbs. And Gottstein ignores the fact that it was a dinner for a dozen people- not exactly the crowd that shows up on weekends. So we hope next time, party planners use LED "candles" instead of tea lights, like they do at the De Young. Having swank private dinners amidst the murals is an outstanding way of raising money to preserve them, from people with the cash to do so, and a lot less taxing on the murals than hordes of tourists armed with water bottles and trail mix.
· Coit Tower Benefit Dinner [Laurie Arons Blog]
· Dinner Party in Coit Tower Endangered Murals, Artist's Grandson Says [City Insider/SF Gate]
· Coit Tower, NIMBY Beacon to the World [Curbed SF]

[Photo Credit: Meg Smith & Associates via Laurie Arons Blog]

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Transbay Tower Update: "The still lower land price reflects...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, March 15, 2012, by Philip Ferrato

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Turf Wars: Coit Tower, NIMBY Beacon to the World

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, February 7, 2012, by Philip Ferrato [Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, via Google Maps]

The Protect Coit Tower Committee delivered more than 16,000 signatures this week, the first step towards a local ballot measure in 2012 to "preserve" Coit Tower. There's nothing quite like a carefully-written ballot measure, and theirs is vague enough to get behind. How can you not support the preservation of the Coit Tower murals? It's like loving puppies. Although most tourists go to up there for the view, the 1930s murals remain important examples of the Depression's iconic Social Realism style, and they've begun to deteriorate, primarily due to water damage, seepage and fog. So we have all the usual suspects- preservation, NIMBYs, and the perennial battle over parking and access.

An early Works Progress Administration project, most of the murals are frescos (painted directly on plaster) with a distinctly local, left-wing political attitude influenced by Mexican painter Diego Rivera, then a major art world celebrity. Rivera was in San Francisco in 1930-31 to work on two mural projects and knew a number of the artists involved in Coit Tower and would return a decade later to paint his vast Pan-American Unity fresco for City College. Sadly, the Protect Coit Tower Committee and its cousin, Telegraph Hill Neighbors are not interested in raising money to restore the murals They want funds to come from concession revenues, but their ballot measure looks more like a smokescreen to restrict access in the evenings and protect their parking.

Coit Tower is closed in the evenings, but the road up- an extension of Lombard Street- is not, and neighbors enjoy the parking lot there at night. Rec & Parks will soon be looking for a new concessionaire to take over, and a successful operator will want to use the tower and parking lot at night for private events- a room at the tower's top for small events, and there's plenty of room in front for a party tent. Food trucks, a more mobile solution, would make it even more popular with drivers. To be fair to residents, during the day (and not just on weekends) they've suffered the line of cars stretching down Lombard Street, full of tourists waiting patiently for a parking space to open in front of the tower, Justin Bieber playing at full blast, and making the #39 bus from Fisherman's Wharf perennially late- a situation that has existed for decades. And no, they probably don't want valet parking and a crowd of young new tech millionaires dancing the night away, either. It's as much about change as Rec & Parks' need to monetize some of their assets, plus the potential need to shut down Coit Tower for a few years while the murals are stabilized and restored. So far, no one seems to have brought up the subject of naming rights to raise revenue. Facebook Coit Tower?
· Neighbors Look Toward Ballot Measure to Protect Coit Tower [SF Examiner]
· Newly-Formed Neighborhood Group Wants to "Preserve and Protect" Coit Tower [Curbed SF]
· San Francisco's Famed Coit Tower Murals in Peril Due to Fog, Neglect [PBS News Hour]
· CCSF: Diego Rivera's Mural May Not Languish in Semi-Obscurity Much Longer [Curbed SF]

For more images, check out photographer Donald Kenney's outstanding collection of details of the Coit Tower murals.

1 Telegraph Hill Boulevard, San Francisco, CA

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Turf Wars: Newly-Formed Neighborhood Group Wants To "Preserve and Protect" Coit Tower

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, December 8, 2011, by Sally Kuchar

[Photo via Esther Reyes]

"Clearly, Coit Tower is being looked at as a marketing opportunity, not as an opportunity for stewardship," said Jon Golinger, president of the ridiculously powerful Telegraph Hill Dwellers and frontman for the newly-formed Protect Coit Tower Committee. "The city's role for Coit Tower is stewarding an incredibly valuable historic and iconic resource — not an opportunity to generate revenue for unknown programs." The group wants to place a measure on the June ballot that would "preserve and protect" the landmark. From the ballot initiative text:

It shall be the policy of the City and County of San Francisco to protect Coit Tower and preserve the historic murals inside Coit Tower by strictly limiting commercial activities and private events at Coit Tower by prioritizing the funds received by the City form any concession operations at Coit Tower for preserving Coit Tower murals, protecting and maintaining the Coit Tower building, and beautifying Pioneer Park around Coit Tower.

Currently, the Rec and Park Department is seeking out a vendor to manage the tower's elevators, food and beverage sales and gift shop for its annual 150,000 visitors. Interested parties must first submit a plan on how it would avoid harming the tower's interior murals. The department will contribute up to $250,000 to restoring the murals, a plan that is being established by the Arts Commission. Additionally, 1 percent of the annual rent from the new vendor would go towards mural maintenance.

The Protect Coit Tower Committee (which currently has 7 "Likes" on its Facebook page) says these efforts are not good enough, and are concerned about the new vendor hosting private events. Or perhaps the Protect Coit Tower Committee, which is essentially run by a small but powerful neighborhood group that historically opposes any development, is trying to privatize a public landmark. Because there's a small threat that the surrounding very fancy and very expensive homes could be bothered with shuttle buses bringing eager tourists to and from a San Francisco landmark for an occasional private event.

The committee has to gather an estimated 9,000 signatures to move forward.
· Neighbors want ballot measure to protect Coit Tower [SFGate]
· Protect Coit Tower [website]
· Protect Coit Tower page [Facebook]
·

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Globe Trotting: Seoul's New Tower Seems Familiar, and Not in a Good Way

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, December 8, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Photo via Design Boom

Set to be finished in Seoul, South Korea, in 2015: two 850-plus-tall residential towers connected by a 10-story "pixelated cloud." Designed by Rotterdam-based architecture firm MVRDV, the complex will include housing, restaurants, green space, a hotel, and a gym. Great. As today's Gizmodo headline bluntly asks: "What the hell were these architects thinking?"

· MVRDV: the cloud [design boom via Gizmodo]

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Last Man in Tower

Searing. Explosive. Lyrical. Compassionate. Here is the astonishing new novel by the Man Booker Prizeâ??winning author of The White Tiger, a book that took rage and anger at injustice and turned it into a thrilling murder story. Now, with the same fearlessness and insight, Aravind Adiga broadens his canvas to give us a riveting story of money and power, luxury and deprivation, set in the booming city of Mumbai.
 
At the heart of this novel are two equally compelling men, poised for a showdown. Real estate developer Dharmen Shah rose from nothing to create an empire and hopes to seal his legacy with a building named the Shanghai, which promises to be one of the cityâ??s most elite addresses. Larger-than-life Shah is a dangerous man to refuse. But he meets his match in a retired schoolteacher called Masterji. Shah offers Masterji and his neighborsâ??the residents of Vishram Societyâ??s Tower A, a once respectable, now crumbling apartment building on whose site Shahâ??s luxury high-rise would be builtâ??a generous buyout. They canâ??t believe their good fortune. Except, that is, for Masterji, who refuses to abandon the building he has long called home. As the demolition deadline looms, desires mount; neighbors become enemies, and acquaintances turn into conspirators who risk losing their humanity to score their payday.
 
Here is a richly told, suspense-fueled story of ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none: the new India as only Aravind Adiga could exploreâ??and exposeâ??it. Vivid, visceral, told with both humor and poignancy, Last Man in Tower is his most stunning work yet.


From the Hardcover edition.

Price: $26.95

Click here to buy from Amazon

Nouvel's MoMA Tower Back On: The 1,050-foot skyscraper planned for a...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, July 27, 2011, by Rob Bear

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Globe Trotting: Six-Thousand People Help Build World's Tallest Lego Tower

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, April 11, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Brazil has just sidled ahead of Chile in terms of an essential indicator of national excellence: the ability to come together and create buildings out of toys. Thousands of people—many of them kids—have just completed the construction of a 102-foot-tall Lego tower in Sao Paulo, breaking the previous world record (held by Santiago, Chile) by nearly 10 inches. The project took four days and 500,000 Lego pieces, which, along with special Lego designers, were all flown in from the company headquarters in Denmark. Brazilian soccer legend Cafu (above) attached the topmost piece.

Video: World's Tallest Lego Tower

· Brazil Builds World's Tallest Lego Tower [BuzzFeed]
· Block party: Brazil builds world's tallest Lego tower [CNN]

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Globe Trotting: Mile-High Tower Twice the Height of Burj Khalifa to be Built

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, April 7, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

No sooner did pro spiderman Alain Robert scale Burj Khalifa in Dubai, currently the world's tallest tower, did the port city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, decide to stick it to the poor guy. Just greenlight: the Kingdom Tower, which, when complete, will stand one mile high—it takes 12 minutes to ascend to the top via elevator—and be filled with a mix of commercial, residential, and hotel space. As far as building teetering skyscrapers in the Middle East goes, developer Kingdom Holding knew exactly who to turn to: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture—architect Adrian Smith had a hand in the design of Burj Khalifa. Turns out Kingdom Tower will be the very obvious, hulking, and hard-to-miss epicenter of a larger urban development expected to accommodate 80,000 people and cost more than $26B. Architizer has a video of a scale-model tour

· World's Most Famous Spiderman Scales World's Tallest Tower [Curbed National]
· Tallest tower plan in Jeddah on track [Gulf News]
· Denial by Architecture: Mile-High Tower OK’d in Saudi Arabia [Architizer]

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Saudi Arabia's Mile-High Tower: Looks like Real-life spiderman Alain Robert...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, April 7, 2011, by Sally Kuchar

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? Previous: The Beauty of a Broken Fire Hydrant; Supervisor Eric Mar's Changing Hairstyles; Fire in La Lengua; More!

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Globe Trotting: Architects Decide to Build Russian Cathedral Next to Eiffel Tower

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, March 21, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Renderings: Ameller & Dubois via Architizer

In a completely baffling move, officials from France—including French President Nicolas Sarkozy himseld—have decided let Russia bring a little Moscow to the City of Light by approving plans for a new structure that hints—but only a teeny, tiny bit—at Russia. Happening right now: the development of a new Russian Orthodox cathedral and cultural center that claimed an open plot of land beside the Eiffel Tower in an international design competition. The complex, from SADE-Arch Group, has to convince the city that it "fits into its surroundings and is built to last" in order for it to actually come to fruition. Which may be tough, considering it has five onion domes reaching higher than 88 feet. And remember, Parisians are hostile even against Gehry.

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