San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Our SF
Photos from 1958 show the Embarcadero Freeway in all its infamy.
It was January 1959, and most of San Francisco seemed to have a case of buyer’s remorse. The Embarcadero Freeway, a double-decker public relations disaster, was finally complete.
The Chronicle had hailed the arrival of almost every other major infrastructure project in the century — from the Golden Gate Bridge to a new City Hall. Even tourist trap Pier 39 received some editorial support, including a blessing from columnist Herb Caen.
But not the Embarcadero Freeway. Never the Embarcadero Freeway.
“A few jackhammers and a wrecking ball or two could in practically no time at all beat this monstrous mistake into concrete chunks of a size convenient for hauling away,” The Chronicle wrote on Feb. 18, 1959, two weeks after the opening. “This would vastly improve the scenery. (And) it would give the Ferry Building and the celebrated view of the bay back to the city.”
The subject comes up after a Chronicle archive rediscovery of 1958 Embarcadero Freeway construction photos, when there was enough built to reveal the magnitude of the structure and how much it ruined views. Chronicle photojournalist Ken McLaughlin approached his assignment like he was photographing a crime scene, taking in the carnage from every angle.
The project that connected Broadway to the Bay Bridge, officially named State Route 480, was approved in the early 1950s, when aesthetics weren’t a priority in San Francisco. Just a few years earlier in 1948, business leaders proposed demolishing the Ferry Building itself and replacing it with a 40-story skyscraper at the end of Market Street.
(On the same Chronicle front page: The Board of Supervisors heard a suggestion to add an electric fence to the Golden Gate Bridge, to prevent suicides.)
When the Embarcadero Freeway was first discussed, there was little input from the citizens of San Francisco. “There were few members of the public at the hearing,” The Chronicle reported on Jan. 20, 1953, at an early City Hall hearing,
when business leaders and local politicians announced their official support of the project.
The Chronicle and Mayor George Christopher remained openly opposed to an aboveground freeway along the Embarcadero. As plans were announced, Christopher lobbied for the freeway to go underground, then argued for the freeway to curve away from the Ferry Building to make room for a park. Both options were deemed too expensive. (The price tag on the tunnel? $15 million.)
By the time of the freeway opening in the first week of February 1959, The Chronicle devoted just four paragraphs to the occasion.
“No official ceremonies will mark the opening of the freeway — which was the target of much criticism from those who claimed it ruined the view of the Ferry Building,” The Chronicle reported on Jan. 31, 1959. “The barriers, now blocking traffic, will simply be moved aside when the final tidying up is completed.”
Mayor Christopher tripled down on his dislike of the freeway later that month, telling a gathering of the American Institute of Architects that the new project was “a regrettable phase of our freeway construction.” As the decades passed, two ballot measures to tear down the freeway were defeated. It took an act of nature to defeat mankind’s blunder; the Loma Prieta earthquake on Oct. 17, 1989, severely damaged both decks. After a brief protest from business leaders, plans to restore the area commenced.
While there were no 1959 opening day ceremonies for the Embarcadero Freeway, the 1991 demolition was a party to be remembered. Mayor Art Agnos himself took the wheel of the construction equipment that started the tear down. The Gay Men’s Chorus performed, and commemorative posters sold for $10.
There’s no way to determine who authored The Chronicle’s Feb. 18, 1959, screed against the Embarcadero Freeway; Chronicle editorials are unsigned. But let’s hope he or she was alive to see the bulldozers roll.
We will give the anonymous Chronicle staffer the last word today:
“As it now stands, this foolish freeway, this road to nowhere, affronts the eye and insults the intelligence, defiles the community’s front yard and compounds a nuisance,” The Chronicle editorial ended. “There is nothing wrong with it that a thorough wrecking job wouldn’t cure.”