View from up high:

Tower under construction offers spectacular views

A look from 1,000 feet above ground near the top of the Salesforce Tower, the city’s tallest building.

As Salesforce Tower nears its final peak of 1,070 feet at the southeast corner of First and Mission streets — more than 200 feet taller than the Transamerica Pyramid — the change to San Francisco’s skyline is startling. The view from the top is more startling still. This week, a Chronicle photographer, editor and reporter were allowed to climb as high as anyone can go, to the top of metal stairs within scaffolding that rises from a catwalk roughly 1,000 feet above the ground. It’s a perspective from which you look down

not only on Sutro Tower but on Land’s End beyond the Presidio. Coit Tower is easy to miss, your eyes drawn instead toward San Pablo Bay.

The closest neighbors aren’t visible, such as Millennium Tower a short block away, because the tower’s tapered peak leaves them behind. But the scalloped outline of 600-foottall 101 California St. zig-zags down below, and you can glimpse the right-field scoreboard of AT&T Park. There’s an elegant counterpoint in the Transamerica Pyramid angling off sharply to the right, and Columbus Avenue slicing smoothly to the left.

This isn’t the view that Salesforce employees and customers will have when the homegrown software giant moves into the bottom half and top two floors of the 61-story building. It’s better. We rode a construction elevator along the tower’s outer walls to “62,” the rooftop above the occupiable space, where mechanical equipment is being installed. From there, a smaller elevator took us to the highest catwalk, which is located within the sculptural crown of the design by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects. The temporary stairs — with several layers of netting down below — allowed a final not-too-rickety ascent.

In a month or so, the last of the structural steel trusses will be bolted into place, and Salesforce Tower will be topped off. Construction workers will begin installing perforated metal panels within the outline of the now-open crown.

Once they’re done, some of the views that you’re seeing will be sealed off. In the meantime, enjoy — unless you’re afraid of heights.

Photos by Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Mirjam Link of Boston Properties looks out from Salesforce Tower’s top floor toward the Bay Bridge. The building has already surpassed the 853-foot Transamerica Pyramid, below with Marin County in the background, as the city’s tallest.