Portal San Francisco's Ferry Building and the reinvention of American cities

Urban design critic King (Cityscapes 2) traces in this vibrant account the rise, decline, and rebirth of San Francisco's Ferry Building, using its 125-year history as a case study of the shifting approach to waterfront design in American cities. Built in 1898 at the point where San Francisco met the harbor, the building and its soaring clock tower could be seen for miles. With depots for both ferries and trains, it was also "the principal point of entry" into the city. The Ferry Building survived the 1906 earthquake and post-WWII demolition threats from urban planners bent on replacing it with corporate high-rises. By the 1950s, it faced decline due to loss of ridership to automobiles, bridges that supplanted its iconic status, and the double-decker freeways that severed it from the waterfront. When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed the Embarcadero Freeway, residents leapt at the chance to remove the highway and restore their waterfront access. The Ferry Building and surrounding plaza were rebranded as a "lifestyle zone," with a farmer's market and artisanal food shops. King's lively narrative brings to life pivotal local figures, including mayor Dianne Feinstein, who advocated tearing down the Embarcadero Freeway, and influential columnist Herb Caen, whose six decades' worth of columns embodied a growing American pessimism over city planning. The result is an illuminating architectural and social history. (Nov.)

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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.