San Francisco Bay Area ... Today

The "Today" of the title was the year 1973 when San Francisco was in the midst of a development spree. A later book, Splendid Survivors: San Francisco's Downtown Architectural Heritage, reacted forcefully to the overbuilding of San Francisco's downtown with brutalist high rises. While Splendid Survivors dismissed the aesthetic value of these newcomers, San Francisco Bay Area... Today celebrated them.

The Urban Land Institute, an almost 90 year old nonprofit organization dedicated to real estate and infrastructure development, compiled this book. While Splendid Survivors focused on architectural style and historical context, San Francisco Bay Area ... Today examines those factors as well as the bottom line. The entries look at the construction cost, each project's function and the amenities offered.

The book only dedicates the opening section to San Francisco's downtown. It also looks at the redevelopment projects of that time such as those at the Embarcadero / Golden Gateway, Japantown, Yerba Buena Center, Diamond Heights and the reconstruction of Market Street. 

As the title suggests, San Francisco Bay Area ... Today covers the wider Bay Area, devoting almost sixty percent of its pages to projects outside San Francisco. Many of the projects detailed are suburban shopping malls and housing developments. The book also has an excellent chapter on the development and technology of the nascent BART system. There are black and white photographs throughout, sometimes show the before and after of a project, throughout the book.

An artist's rendering of an unbuilt Sports Arena at Yerba Buena Center

San Francisco Bay Area ... Today / Compiled by Carla C. Sobala, Meetings Division Director, Urban Land Institute, 1973 Fall Meeting. ([Urban Land Institute], 1973).

John Carl Warnecke and Associates Buildings in San Francisco (early 1970s)

One of the John Carl Warnecke and Associations first projects of the 1970s was the addition of a tower to the Hilton Hotel at 201 Mason Street.

photo source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

At 46 stories, this brutalist structure dwarfed (and continues to dwarf) the surrounding structures in the neighborhood.

"Model of the New Hilton Tower, John Carl Warnecke and Henri Lewin display replica"

(image source: San Francisco Examiner December 23, 1968)

Work commenced on the tower in January 1969 and wrapped up by 1971. This addition brought the total number of rooms to 1800, making it the largest hotel west of Chicago.  The stark and windowless north and south faces of the building are made out of silvery-white hued aluminum, which Schwarzer has described as "sensuous." 

The Hilton's special features included a glassed-in restaurant at the top and an outdoor bridge across to the swimming pool atop the original hotel. Herb Caen quoted a rival architect from the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill firm who remarked dismissively of Warnecke's tower: "I don't think of it as a building, I think of it as a convention machine." Warnecke's firm designed a second 19 floor tower in 1987 for the Hilton and also added a domed clock tower. A more recent appraisal by John King, the San Francisco Chronicle's architecture critic, described the Hilton as a "high-rise [that] stands its ground with a quiet sheen."

Around this time John Warnecke and Associates, in collaboration with Clement Chen, worked on a second high rise hotel -- the Holiday Inn at 750 Kearny Street (now also a Hilton).

An early sketch for the Redevelopment Agency's Chinese Cultural and Trade Center by Clement Chen and Associates and Dartmond Cherk, ca. 1965-6

The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency spearheaded this project which was to be a joint Chinese Cultural and Trade Center and hotel. The agency treated this as a follow up to the culture and trade center they had built as part of the Japantown redevelopment in Western Addition. They set up an arrangement where the private developers of the hotel would pay for the construction of the cultural center who would only pay a $1 annual rent for decades to follow. Despite this community benefit, there were protests that this City-owned plot of land, that had been the site of the Hall of Justice, was being designated for a business and not public housing. 

The original design is credited to Clement Chen & Associates and Dartmond Cherk. The latter was hired by John Carl Warnecke and Associates giving their firm partial credit for the design. Not long after the hotel's completion, Allen Temko, the Chronicle's architecture critic, arguing against a remodel plan for the City of Paris store by Warnecke's firm, used his article to excoriate all of the architect's tall structures. 

San Francisco Hall of Justice viewed from Portsmouth Square (source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection).

Temko lamented the demolition of the Hall of Justice which he extolled as a "neo-classical palazzo." He complained that the adjacent "Portsmouth Plaza, where the American flag was first raised in San Francisco" had "suffered irreparable harm" from this destruction. He complained that Chen and Warnecke and "erected an odd concoction called the 'Chinese Cultural Center,' which is nothing more than the Redevelopment Agency's euphemism for a Holiday Inn with a spare room for Chinese artifacts."

Holiday Inn and pedestrian bridge at Portsmouth Square, 1973 (San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

Temko's rebuke continued:

This bulbous slab, from whose roof non-structural ventilating ducts emerge like tumors, exhibits just about every mistake that can be committed in civic design. It arrogantly turns a narrow side to the square, squirting a very mistaken bridge across Kearny street into its center, depriving the tiny playground of light, and almost incidentally, ruining the Kearney street vista toward Telegraph Hill... If this were not enough, the Holiday Inn has also ripped open a hole in the eastern flank of the square...

Clement Chen defended the structure in a letter to the editor: "The Holiday Inn on Kearney is a large structure and therefore monumental, as it should be. If it appears arrogant to Temko, so be it. What great architecture in the past appears otherwise?" Although Chen took sole responsibility for the design, Temko claimed that Warnecke had shown him sketches that demonstrated the contribution of his firm to the design.

Whether or not the design is Chen's or Warnecke's (or Cherk's), the building's geometric regularity and lack of ornament is consistent with the brutalist style of other buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke and Associates.

Gebhard, et al, dismiss it as "a hotel with token culture in the base." Schwarzer is a little kinder, describing it as a "concrete behemoth" but admitting that it's in "the best of the brutalism style." 

In 1986, Examiner columnist Bill Mandel held an "edifice contest"--an invitation to readers to submit their choices of the most beautiful and the ugliest buildings in San Francisco. John Carl Warnecke and Associates rated two ugly "beasts": the Hilton Hotel discussed above at number 6, and the Tishman Building at 525 Market Street close behind at number 7.

525 Market Street, photographed by Philip Oldfield (image source: Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat)

Later known as First Market Tower and now simply as 525 Market Street, at the time it was completed it was the second tallest building in  San Francisco. (It's presently ranked #20 in height). 

Allen Temko took an even harsher view of this building which he describes as "an insensate skyscraper" that "is about as clumsy an essay in concrete-covered shell as we have in the city." Splendid Survivors, a survey of downtown San Francisco architecture from 1979 describes it as "an immense blockbuster without scale clues, without any gesture beyond a perfunctory little sliver of a plaza. The worst of the 'new Market Street' buildings."

image source: Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects Inc.

525 Market Street shows the seem geometric regularity as many of the Warnecke firm's other structures. The building is 38 floors tall.  35 of the stories have floor-to-ceiling windows with twelve banks of three windows on the north and south faces and ten banks of three windows each on the east and west faces.  Its start regularity and lack of ornamentation may have made it an unattractive outlier when it was built, but since then it has been joined by many other brutalist companions and holds its own as a structure.

Bibliography:

"At Last, A New Look for the Hilton," San Francisco Chronicle August 26, 1985.

Caen, Herb, "Have a Weird Day," San Francisco Chronicle September 7, 1971.

Canter, Donald, "Chinese Culture Finds a Home-Finally Project Begins; Center to House Auditorium, Galleries," San Francisco Chronicle January 28, 1973.

Canter, Donald, "Giant Market St. Skyscraper Job Will Start Soon," San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle January 17, 1971

Chen, Clement, Jr., "He Doesn't Agree" [Letters to the Editor], San Francisco Chronicle September 3, 1974.

"Chinese Center Gets Go Ahead," Engineers News December 1967.

"A Chinese Center Planned on Coast," New York Times December 3, 1967.

"Chinese Projects Blossom in California Cities," AIA Journal February 1968.

Chinese Cultural and Trade Center: Development Proposals (San Francisco Redevelopment Agency,| [1965 or 1966].

Corbett, Michael R., Splendid Survivors: San Francisco's Downtown Architectural Heritage (California Living Books, 1979).

"43 Story Tower at S.F. Hotel," San Francisco Chronicle December 24, 1968.

Gebhard, David, et al., The Guide to Architecture in San Francisco and Northern California, Rev. ed. (Gibbs M. Smith, 1985).

Grieg, Michael, "Pomp And Protest At a New Hotel," San Francisco Chronicle January 14, 1971.

"High at The Hilton: Cocktail Bar on Top," San Francisco Examiner December 23, 1968.

King, John, "Clean And Cool Above The Fray," San Francisco Chronicle April 4, 2010.

Mandel, Bill, "The Beauties and the Beasts," San Francisco Examiner April 6, 1986.

"'New Look' Hilton Tower Approved," San Francisco Chronicle April 13, 1984.

San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, The Decade Past And The Decade to Come ([San Francisco Redevelopment Agency], 1969).

Schwarzer, Mitchell, San Francisco: Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area: A History & Guide (William Stout Publishers, 2007).

Temko, Allan, "After the City of Paris...," San Francisco Chronicle August 15, 1974.

Temko, Allan, "Dr. Fu Manchu's Plastic Pagoda," San Francisco Magazine May 1971.

Temko, Allan, No Way to Build a Ballpark: And Other Irreverent Essays on Architecture (Chronicle Books, 1993).

St. James Press Reference Dictionaries

Over the past 50 years, St. James Press has published dozens of excellent reference encyclopedias and dictionaries. Several of these heavy tomes are biographical encyclopedias of figures in the arts from the late twentieth century.

Contemporary Architects (1987, 1994 editions)

Contemporary Artists (1977, 1983, 1989, 1996, 2002 editions)
Contemporary Composers (1992)

Contemporary Designers (1984, 1990, 1997)

Contemporary Fashion (1995)

Contemporary Masterworks (1991)

Contemporary Photographers (1982, 1987. 1995)

Contemporary Women Artists (1997)

The Contemporary Arts Series includes a resume-like biography, exhibition history, list of works, list of publications (bibliography), and an introductory essay or personal statement. Because newer editions add and subtract entries on different artists, the earlier editions continue to have value for the researcher. 

Contemporary Masterworks is unique in focusing on individual works of visual art from the 20th century (including art, architecture, photography and design. It devotes one page to a black and white reproduction of the artwork and another page to a descriptive essay and bibliography.

The International Dictionaries published by St. James Press focus on a wider span of history and also provide listings of creative works and a bibliography.  The dictionaries for ballet, modern dance intersperse entries about performers, choreographers and works for the dance. Likewise the International Dictionary of Opera includes entries on individual operas, opera singers and composers.

The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, published across three editions, has separate volumes for films, directors, actors and actresses and writer and production artists.

The International Dictionary of Theatre is published in two volumes, one for plays and the other for playwrights. The International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture is divided into two volumes - one for architects, the other for works of architecture.

International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture (1993)

International Dictionary of Art and Artists (1993)

International Dictionary of Ballet (1993)

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers (1984, 1990, 1997)

International Dictionary of Modern Dance, 1998

International Dictionary of Opera, 1993

International Dictionary of Theatre, 1992

The more recently published St. James Guide to Black Artists shares the same format as the Contemporary Arts Series volumes listed above, but is focused upon artists of Africa and of the African diaspora. Similarly the St. James Guide to Hispanic Artists profiles artists from Latin America or were active there. The St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture is unlike the other reference works discussed here in that it also discusses style and genre in addition to notable performing artists and producers.

St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture (2012)

St. James Guide to Black Artists (1997)

St. James Guide to Hispanic Artists: Profiles of Latino and Latin American Artists (2002)

John Carl Warnecke and Associates Buildings in San Francisco (1950s-1960s)

Picketers in front the Lane Bryant store in 1957, source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

The earliest evidence of John Carl Warnecke and Associates work in San Francisco dates from the mid-1950s at 55 Geary Street, the former Lane Bryant store. A San Francisco Chronicle article credits him with work on the exterior, although this work is difficult to detect today. The present exterior facade is different than this 1957 photograph.

image source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

Warnecke's next work in San Francisco was on the Federal Office Building #2 (now known as the Phillip Burton Federal Office Building) completed in 1959. Warnecke's firm was one of three firms involved in the design along with with Albert F. Roller, and Stone, Marraccini and Patterson. It's difficult to determine what the respective firms' contributions were. Nevertheless, the exterior share properties that we will see in Warnecke's later work.

Multiple stone columns run the length of the building on all four sides. These are hashed by horizontal lines top to bottom; there are four of these vertical lines for every floor of the building. Between these columns there are additional metallic columns that subdivide the intervening space into four window spaces.  The windows take up the size of two horizontal hash lines and the other two lines are placed above and below as spandrels or buffers between floors. Continuing the theme of four, the long face of the building has seventeen columns creating 16 (four squared) sections.  Furthermore this pattern is executed across 16 stories.

In San Francisco Architecture, Sally Woodbridge and her co-authors dismissed the Federal Building as "A lackluster blockbuster expressing all too well the contemporary scale of government"

The Warnecke firm's next major project was an addition to the French Hospital (now the Kaiser Hospital French campus) which was opened incrementally in 1963 and 1964.  A 1964 Architectural Record article describes the architecture:  

Floor-to-ceiling glass walls of the first floor are recessed behind columns to provide an outdoor shelter related to waiting space in the lobby. 

The front facade is a rhythmic pattern of glass metal between precast concrete panels. Above and below each window are decorative bronzed grills giving the effect of balconies and providing sun control for tall windows.

French Hospital, photographed by Richard E. Persoff (source: Architectual Record 1964)

Around the same time, the Warnecke firm designed the high rise apartments at 1170 Sacramento Street, sometimes known as The Nob Hill, Nob Hill Apartments, or Nob Hill Condominiums.

Above a comparatively ornate lobby floor, this structure employs rectangular repetition and symmetry on a small horizontal scale. An Architectural Record review describes:

In form, the building is a 22-story rectangular tower with arched openings at ground level, and with balconies and bay windows serving to soften the shape of the rectangle above. 

The newly constructed Nob Hill Condominium (source: Architectural Record April 1965)

After working Nob Hill luxury apartments, Warnecke's next San Francisco project was high rise to house seniors commissioned by the City's housing authority.

One hundred and eighty residents attended the dedication Tuesday at the Housing Authority's new senior citizen resident, the Mission Dolores apartments at 1855 15th street. Eneas J. Kane, executive director, said the ten-story apartment cost $1,350,000 and was design by John Charles [sic] Warnecke, the architect. Rents range from $35 to $65 a month. There are 92 units. 

source: San Francisco Chronicle December 9, 1966

Named Mission Dolores Apartments, these apartments are located at 1855 15th Street. This building's front shows more exterior variety than other Warnecke structures but is still based on rectangles and symmetry.

image source: Bridge Housing

Portions of the facade seen from the street are inset.

image source: FineLine Construction

The back of the building, not visible from the street, shows more of the regularity seen with the Federal Building.

A pre-construction drawing of 425 California Street (source: Architectural Record September 1966)

John Carl Warnecke's tallest San Francisco building to that point was built at 425 California Street for the First Savings and Loan Association, a subsidiary of Great Western Financial Corporation. (This corporation was later acquired by Washington Mutual Bank that is now owned by JP Morgan Chase).

"Glass wall construction--with all its advantages of openness, color, reflectivity and drama--gives you, the architect, uncommon freedom of expression. For full details, contact your nearest PPG Architectural Representative, consult Sweet's catalog file, or write PPG Industries, One Gateway Center, Pittsburgh, Pa. 19522. First Savings Building, 425 California Street, San Francisco"

Architect: John Carl Warnecke and Associates, San Francisco

source: AIA Journal September 1968

The building opened in 1968. Advertising from PPG Industries (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) extolls the "glass wall" made possible through their materials. The exterior was distinctive enough to draw notice in the New York Times:

The bay window design was made possible by cantilevering each floor beyond the perimeter column line by about 19 inches at intervals of 6 feet, 4 1/2 inches, and enclosing the extended area with bronze-tinted glass on three sides. The facade line is indented between the bay windows to produce a curtain wall of unusual grace.

Each side of the building has 13 windowed sections -- six extended and seven recessed. The number of sections is half the number of stories for the building (26). A San Francisco Examiner article noted that the window treatment gave the building "a facade of visual interest and enhance the interior appeal as well" owing to the natural light. 

425 California Street (image source: 425 California [website])

The building's steel frame is encased by a grey glass exterior partitioned by opaque metal spandrels that blend with the glass in the daytime but provide contrast when the building is illuminated at night.

Pacific Telephone's Proposed Bay Area Headquarters... the 12-story structure, costing about $15 million will house more than 1,700 employes [sic]

source: San Francisco Examiner January 8, 1963

John Carl Warnecke and Associates designed an additional building at 666 Folsom Street in 1964 for the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph corporation. 

The site of the future 666 Folsom Street in 1961 (image source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection).

In the early 1960s, South of Market was on the cusp of major redevelopment. A 1961 view of the site shows parking lots and older buildings (with the original 1925 Pacific Telephone & Telegraph building in the background). 

666 Folsom, 1969-1970 (source: San Francisco Redevelopment Agency collection, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

The building was a pioneering structure in the redevelopment of San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.

666 Folsom, 1982, photograph by Sid Tate 

(source: San Francisco Examiner April 25, 1982 in the vertical file "South of Market" in the Art, Music and Recreation Center's Newspaper Clipping Files)

Similar to Warnecke's other buildings, 666 Folsom uses geometric patterns and repetition to achieve its form. Verplank describes the main facade being "divided into ten bays by thin concrete fins." These ten bays correspond to the ten upper windowed stories.  A thin molding surrounds each window, grouping four windows together within each grid section. 

666 Folsom Street - May 2008 Google Streetview

By 2004, SBC Communications (the successor at that time to Pacific Telephone & Telegraph) had closed up shop in the building. The 2008 Google Street View shows the building probably abandoned with a couple of boarded up windows.  

In a 2008 report on the structure, VerPlanck noted that Warnecke's building appeared to eligible for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources both "for its prominent and precedent-setting role in the post-war-era redevelopment of the South of Market" and "as the work of a master and as an excellent and early example of the Brutalist style in San Francisco." 

Around 2014, the exterior of Warnecke's structure was replaced and radically reimagined by the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill firm. Their architects rejected the "cumbersome, unwelcoming mass" of the original and replaced it with a glass facade. The Chronicle's architect critic John King wrote approvingly that "once homely boxes have a fresh sheen."

A later entry in the blog will look at John Carl Warnecke and Associate's designs from the 1970s and 1980s.

Bibliography: 

"About," French-American Foundation for Medical Research and Education [website].

"The Bay Window Is Going Modern," San Francisco Examiner August 20, 1967.

"Bay Windows Installed on San Francisco Tower," New York Times September 10, 1967.

CENTRAL SOMA Historic Context Statement & Historic Resource Survey (San Francisco Department of Public Works, 2015).

Historic Resource Evaluation 633 Folsom Street San Francisco, CA (Architectural Resources Group, Inc, 2014).

"Housing for Elderly," San Francisco Chronicle January 2, 1964.

King, John, "Out-dated Buildings in S.F. Swap Their Concrete Shells for Sleek Glass," San Francisco Chronicle April 23, 2014.

"Lane Bryant Will Open Store Here," San Francisco Chronicle March 20, 1955.

"New Residence," San Francisco Chronicle December 9, 1966.

"PT&T Played Big Role in Bay Area's 1962 Economy," San Francisco Examiner January 8, 1963.

"Nob Hill Elegance by Warnecke." Architectural Record April 1965. 

"Thoughtful Layouts for Efficient Nursing," Architectural Record October 1964.

VerPlanck, Christopher, Primary Record / Building, Structure, and Object Record, 666 Folsom (State of California - The Resources Agency, Department of Parks and Recreation, 2008).

Wallack, Todd, "SBC to Move Jobs Out of S.F. - Phone Giant Plans to Consolidate Its Call Centers, Offices," San Francisco Chronicle October 29, 2004.

Watson, Lloyd, "12-Story HQ for Bay Area," San Francisco Chronicle December 20, 1961.

Woodbridge, Sally Byrne, et al, San Francisco Architecture : An Illustrated Guide to the Outstanding Buildings, Public Artworks, and Parks in the Bay Area of California, rev. ed. (Ten Speed Press, 2005).

John Carl Warnecke (1919-2010)

John Carl Warnecke (photo by Don Steffen in Newsweek October 2, 1967)

The Market Street Joint Venture Architects that re-envisioned and rebuilt San Francisco's Market Street in the 1960s and 1970s consisted of three firms: Mario J. Ciampi & Associates, Lawrence Halprin & Associates and John Carl Warnecke & Associates. 

John Carl Warnecke was a great power in his field. At that time he ran the largest architectural firm in the United States, headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Honolulu and Washington, DC. San Francisco Chronicle, John King architecture writer described Warnecke as a "a Bay Area architect whose mark on the American landscape can be measured from San Francisco's skyline to John F. Kennedy's grave site."

Warnecke's main claim to fame was his association with president John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie (the architect's obituaries in the Chronicle and the New York Times both headlined this). He was commissioned by the Kennedy White House to redesign Washington DC's historic Lafayette Square. Following the president's assassination he was selected to design John F. Kennedy memorial at Arlington National Cemetery with the Eternal Flame. Senator Edward Kennedy hired him to design McLean, Virginia home. Gossip writers also printed rumors that Warnecke was romantically involved with the president's widow. 

John Warnecke, tackle for the 1940 Stanford Indians (source: Merrick, Down on The Farm)

John Carl Warnecke was born on February 24, 1919 in Oakland, CA, son of architect Carl Ingomar Warnecke.  He attended Stanford University where he played tackle on the school's undefeated 1940 team that won the 1941 Rose Bowl. He remained physically imposing all his life at 6 foot 3 inches tall and 220 pounds. He quickly completed a bachelor's degree at Harvard University in 1942 where he studied with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, an innovator in the use of new materials in construction and a proponent of functionalism in design.

Warnecke began his career as an apprentice to Arthur Brown, Jr. while studying at Stanford. Brown was one of the architects for of the Civic Center's San Francisco Opera House and War Memorial Veterans Building plus the Federal Building at 50 United Nations Plaza. Warnecke later worked for his father before starting his own firm in 1950. It stayed in business until 1980.

He wrote about his work for the biographical encyclopedia Contemporary Architects:

The firm has been asked to design in places–equally beautiful–which were built by man over generations: the environs of the White House; historic Annapolis; the campuses of of the University of California and Stanford University; old Monterey; the Royal Palace grounds of Honolulu; fashionable Nob Hill; a site adjacent to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo; and the historic residential area of Neuilly in Paris. In historic places such as these, the needs of the present must show respect for the past.

Warnecke has been called a forerunner of Contextual Modernism in architecture which according to Middleton emphasizes "spatial volume" with both a regularity in pattern and a lack of ornamentation. His architecture has sometimes been called brutalist. Krantz describes Warnecke's style as "a curious blend of Beaux-Arts neoclassicism, Bauhaus Modernism and Far Eastern exoticism."

John Carl Warnecke & Associates designed hundreds of buildings of all types. The firm was hired to work on many college campuses. These included local institutions like Stanford University (notably the designing the Maples Pavilion), The University of California at Berkeley (designing Moffitt Library), UC Santa Cruz (designing the McHenry Library), The San Francisco Theological Seminary, Sonoma State University, and the College of San Mateo. The firm also worked at Georgetown University, The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, The United States Naval Academy, The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Tufts University. 

The Hart Senate Office Building (source: United States Senate)

John Carl Warnecke & Associates was also responsible for designing government buildings in Oakland, Sacramento, Washington, DC (including the Hart Senate Office Building), Minneapolis and Honolulu. Two entries from the American Architects Directory of 1962 and 1970 show some of this work and the awards that he and the firm received for it.

source: American Architects Directory, 2nd edition (1962)

source: American Architects Directory, 3rd edition (1970)

After retiring to the North Bay, John Carl Warnecke died on April 17, 2010 in Healdsburg, California.

Many of the buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke & Associates are a familiar part of the United States built landscape, but Warnecke's name has largely faded from discussion. There are not any books published about his life and career.

A subsequent blog entry will detail Warnecke's contributions to San Francisco's architecture.

Bibliography:

American Architects Directory, 2nd edition (R.R. Bowker Co., 1962).

American Architects Directory, 3rd edition (R.R. Bowker Co., 1970).

Better Market Street Project EIRAppendix 6: Cultural Resources Supporting Information (San Francisco Planning Department, 2014).

Cardinalis, Kye, "The Contextual Architectural of John Carl Warnecke," Atomic Ranch July 22, 2023.

Contemporary Architects, editor, Muriel Emanuel, 3rd ed. (St. James Press, 1994).

Grimes, William, "John Carl Warnecke, Architect to Kennedy, Dies at 91," New York Times April 23, 2010.

King, John, "John Warnecke - S.F. Architect with Close Ties to Kennedy Clan," San Francisco Chronicle May 7, 2010.

Krantz, Les., American Architects: A Survey of Award-Winning Contemporaries and Their Notable Works (Facts on File, 1989).

Merrick, Fred, Down on The Farm: A Story of Stanford Football (Strode Publishers, 1975).

Middleton, Deborah A. "Warnecke, John Carl," in The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, editor in chief, Joan Marter (Oxford University Press, 2011).

"On The Square," Newsweek October 2, 1967.

Shearer, Lloyd, "Jackie Kennedy, World's Most Eligible Widow - Will She Marry Again," Pasadena Independent Star News December 4, 1966.

"Ted Kennedy's Virginia House On Market For Nearly $10 Million," Huffington Post May 22, 2012.

 
"Warnecke, John Carl," in Current Biography (The H.W. Wilson Company, 1968).

"Warnecke, John Carl," in Current Biography (The H.W. Wilson Company, 2010).

The Main Library's Barn

In our vertical file of newspaper clippings file for the San Francisco Public Library we have an article reviewing the architecture and construction from the California Construction Link newspaper.  It's from the May 31, 1996 issue and is entitled "Main Library: San Francisco's Newest Landmark Opens."

The article includes an intriguing paragraph about our James Ingo Freed designed building: 

The library's contemporary facade is dominated by a 71-by-31-foot rectangular "barn"-like structure called the "House of the Book." This structure includes a public auditorium on the basement level, part of the Children's Library on the second floor and the City's History Center under the vaulted ceiling at the top level. Built to parallel the angle of Market Street, which it faces at the corner of Hyde and Grove, the structure's self-enclosed walls extend from the basement to a point above above the main roof line, where they are topped by a free-standing lead coated, copper barrel-shaped vault roof.

 photograph by Susan Lowenstein, from California Construction Link May 31, 1996 

When invoking a "barn," the article's author is describing the shape of the roof at the right of the library when viewed from U.N. Plaza.

This "barn" effect is even more evident in a Google Earth 3D view.

Much like the structural circular columns on the east and west sides of the atrium in the public areas of the library, this barn footprint extends from the Library's Lower Level to the top of the building.  Like the Periodical Reading Room on the Library's 6th floor it is angled according to Market Street and the South of Market grid.

In fact, the eastern edge of the barn nearly parallels the eastern curb of Eight Street to the south.

But the dominant angle is that of Market Street to the south.

Having looked at the "barn" from the outside, we will look at how its form has shaped the interior spaces of the Main Library.  Although much of the barn is an interior space that is not open to the public, housing collections and staff work spaces, it also helps some of the public space.


Previous entries about the architecture of the San Francisco Public Library Main Library:

The Altes Museum and the Main Library (March 6, 2019)

Rotunda Resonances in the San Francisco Main Library (March 25, 2019)

 Labrouste's Libraries, Structural Columns and the Main Library (May 9, 2019)

Main Library Columns, pt. 1 (June 13, 2019)

Main Columns, pt. 2 (July 18, 2019)

Main Columns, pt. 2

One of the principal design elements of James Ingo Freed's Main Library building are cylindrical columns located on the east and west sides of the atrium.

A previous entry looked at the positioning of these columns on the west side of the Main Library building.  This entry will look at them on the building's east side.

Columns 6, 7, 10 and 11 extend from the Library's Lower Level and parallel the ceremonial staircase to the west of the atrium.

Only column 11 is visible from the Lower Level, located just outside the door to the restrooms.  The other columns cannot be seen on the Lower Level because they are incorporated into interior walls. It remains visible as it extends to the 1st floor.  On the 2nd floor column 11 is incorporated into the south wall at the entrance to Children's Center

On the 1st floor, columns 7 and 6 are located on both sides of the self-return machine.

Column 10 is placed further back in the sorting area with a metallic covering to protect it from the impact of book trucks.   (Column 11 on the outside of this space).

On the 2nd floor, columns 7 and 6 mark the beginning of the ceremonial staircase.

Columns 11 and 10 are just outside the windows at the entrance to the Children's Center.  Column 11, as noted above is incorporated into the outside wall.

On the 3rd floor, columns 7 and 6 are placed parallel at the rear of the ceremonial staircase.

Columns 10 and 11 behind them are positioned behind a bookcase and in front of the study rooms.

Viewed from the 4th floor phonodisc collection, columns 8 and 9 stand parallel to the staircase and columns 10 and 11 stand close behind computer terminals and in front of the study rooms.

On the 5th floor, columns 6 and 7 are enclosed within a foyer at the top of the stairs.

Columns 10 and 11 stand between a desk and a card catalog and the study rooms.

Here is a view of columns 7, 6 (behind glass) and 10 on the 5th floor facing the staircase.

On 6th floor, columns 10 and 11 have a metallic exterior and line the windowed wall to the Rooftop Terrace.

Their partners, columns 6 and 7 are spaced within the 6th floor's Rooftop Gallery.

Columns 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14 will be discussed in a later entry.


Previous entries:

The Altes Museum and the Main Library (March 6, 2019)

Rotunda Resonances in the San Francisco Main Library (March 25, 2019)

 Labrouste's Libraries, Structural Columns and the Main Library (May 9, 2019)

Main Library Columns, pt. 1 (June 13, 2019)