PORTAL

The compelling 125-year history and continuing resonance of an architectural landmark.

Urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, King is uniquely well placed to tell the story of San Francisco’s Ferry Building, one of the most recognizable buildings in America. “Every city has a landmark like this,” writes the author, “a building through which one can read the past.” His explanation of the engineering marvel of its construction on an artificial seawall and appraisals of its aesthetic merits and symbolic importance as a "monumental gateway" to the city are easily accessible to general readers. King makes a strong case that the Ferry Building is "a profound work of civic infrastructure connecting the city to the region and the nation, proof of urban ascendance." Architect Arthur Page Brown's masterpiece, which opened in 1898, withstood San Francisco's disastrous 1906 earthquake and then survived its usurpation as a transportation hub by the rise of the automobile and construction of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges in the late 1930s. The building then spent 50 years in limbo, worsened by the 1959 construction of the elevated Embarcadero Freeway, which blocked its classical façade and closed off downtown's connection to the waterfront. The Ferry Building held firm during the 1989 earthquake, while the Freeway was compromised. This led to the roadway's 1991 demolition, spurring what Mayor Art Agnos called "renewal for a spectacular waterfront that has been blighted for 32 years by a concrete monster." King describes the building's rebirth as a marketplace and what Bon Appetit dubbed "a kind of cathedral for the city’s food-worshipping population.” The book’s climax and most salient point is King’s compelling exploration of the existential predicament facing the Ferry Building, adjacent piers, and waterfront—and those of all port cities—as climate change leads to inexorable sea-level rise.

Fascinating insights into San Francisco history and the transformation of other waterfront cities.