On balance, update of exchange a gain
There’s a good news/bad news tale in San Francisco’s most recent office tower.
The good news is that the 19-story high-rise behind the facade of the San Francisco Mining Exchange at 350 Bush St. includes the meticulous restoration of a 1923 landmark that had sat empty since 1979. The bad news is that the interior has been neutered, although with good intentions, and the tower feels archaic even though it’s brand-new.
The moral of the story is one we’re confronted with often in American cities: Historic preservation can be a messy process, no matter how physically pristine the results.
In the case of 350 Bush, at least, the trade-off is worth it.
The original structure was an extravagant shell for the trading hall inside, a mid-block mock-classical temple with six florid Corinthian columns beneath a peaked crown adorned with five Greek gods. The architect was a young Timothy Pflueger, who went on to craft such gems as Oakland’s Paramount Theatre and the Pacific Telephone tower at 140 New Montgomery St.
That shell is almost all that survived a succession of owners and incarnations, including a stint as the San Francisco Curb Exchange (for people walking in off the street to buy stocks, apparently). That name survives above the columns, though it was hidden during the decades when development schemes came and went — one with a high-rise slab that would have been taller than the 435-foot Russ Building directly to the east.
The 19-story tower that opened this summer, by contrast, tops off at 270 feet, and begins a polite 30 feet behind the classical facade. It’s squat, mostly glass, with sculpted setbacks that defer to the craggy grandeur of the Russ, a true San Francisco treat from 1927 designed by the great George Kelham.
The terra-cotta facade has been gently scrubbed, with long-missing pieces such as the rooftop flourishes recast by the original manufacturer. The show continues inside: The plaster walls of the old trading hall are replicated, while the elaborately detailed ceiling has been restored with loving care.
All this is publicly accessible — you can walk through the trading hall and the tower’s lobby and emerge on Pine Street — and a credit to the large cast of characters involved. Not just Heller Manus Architects and its preservation architect, Page & Turnbull, but also the conservationist who hand-painted the stencil patterns on the molded ceiling, Beate Brühl. Rainbow Waterproofing and Restoration freshened up the facade. Patrick J. Ruane Inc. handled the plaster work. (There’s an excellent display on the landmark’s history and restoration near the Bush Street entrance.)
Yet the achievement feels hollow — literally.
The core of the problem is that the central hall was originally designed to hold hundreds of busy traders, complete with a catwalk at the mezzanine-level trading floor and a chalkboard along one wall to keep track of stock fluctuations. Grand scale aside, it was a space meant to be filled with clamorous life.
Flash-forward to 2018: The overscale room sits empty except for four round columns along the edge that help support the tower above. Tables and chairs are on order, true, and the stated aim of developers Lincoln Property Co. and Gemdale USA is to make the hall into a meeting place for nearby workers. But the tone will likely be posh, more elite than inviting.
Another damper is that the joyously restored ceiling can’t be appreciated unless you bring binoculars — the hand-painted paneling is 35 feet above the floor, and there’s no lighting to accent the intricate colors. Unless this changes, and it should, the artistry is all but lost.
Even with better lighting and places to sit, the interior would still feel slightly off.
That’s because it isn’t really a historic place. Everything except for the first 30 feet was removed to make way for the new tower. The hall’s dimensions were then replicated. The ceiling panels were returned to the space. The dark-toned stone flooring was selected in homage to the trading hall’s long-gone wood.
This is not the first such simulation in the city. Think of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, where remnants of Willis Polk’s 1907 substation were reassembled in the foyer behind the preserved front wall. Or the “preservation” of the skylighted dome of the old Emporium by jacking it up 60 feet to serve as the ceiling for the top floor of shops at Westfield San Francisco Centre.
On the street, the retained facades hold their own. Inside, inevitably, things don’t ring true.
At 350 Bush, the tower has an identity crisis of its own.
This is a tough site even without the old Mining Exchange building: Restaurant-lined Belden Place is to the west while the dark granite of 555 California St. looms to the north. The backside of the Russ Building provides a show in itself.
The response by architect Jeffrey Heller? Use granite near the Russ and glass everywhere else. Pull in from the street rather than try to stand out.
“It’s the hardest project I’ve worked on,” said Heller, who began when he was hired by a prior developer during the dot-com boom. “I wanted (350 Bush) to have a light and airy feel, while also being respectful of its surroundings.”
It’s almost as if you’re looking at a structural diagram of the Russ Building — the same form but more compact. Or a model with flat planes of glass instead of textured masonry. I’m reminded of Manhattan towers from the 1950s, clad in the novelty of glass but shaped to fit within the era’s ziggurat zoning requirements.
In a sense, what we have at 350 Bush is an imperfect tower that made possible an imperfect act of salvation. But that’s how cities work. Trade-offs count as triumphs if you gain more than you lose.
Put another way? I’ll wager that if the traders who once filled the hall were here to take stock, they’d count this transaction as one where San Francisco, comfortably, comes out ahead.
John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron