Golden Gateway
Golden Gateway
LOCATION
San Francisco, CA
CLIENT
Perini San Francisco Associates, Golden Gateway Redevelopment Authority
Completion Date
1960-1968
Architect
Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, De Mars & Reay, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
TypE
Civic Landscapes
Workplace
Residential
Description
Golden Gateway is the former location of San Francisco’s congested marketplace for wholesale produce. With the assistance of the Redevelopment Agency, most of the produce firms were re-established in a modern produce terminal built for them near Islais Creek.
While establishing SWA, Peter Walker won a national competition with a group of architects to design the Golden Gateway, a 20-acre urban-renewal project that is one of the largest mixed-use complexes in the Western United States. David Rockefeller, John Portman, and Trammel-Crow headed the team that submitted the winning proposal. The design called for maintaining the existing grid of the city in order to insert the center in the urban fabric while allowing for the expression of the urban culture of adjacent neighborhoods. The design adopts an approach of layering spaces to provide the necessary circulation in two separate systems—ground-level for cars, and above in an elevated network of levels and walkways for pedestrians. A walk through the area takes one across plazas, stairs, and into courtyards. It provides a fundamentally urban experience.
Implementation of the Golden Gateway Redevelopment Project began in the early 1960s and generated 1,400 new housing units and the construction of the 3.5 million square foot Embarcadero Center—itself the five-block complex consisting of four office buildings, shops, the 840-room Hyatt Regency hotel, and some twelve acres of public plazas and open space. The Center’s three-level shopping gallery is spread over the four-block area with interconnecting bridges and walkways that enable one to tour the entire eight-and-a-half-acre development without ever encountering vehicular traffic. Construction was completed by the end of 1986.
Peter Walker worked with the architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to create Maritime Plaza, a series of plazas on the roof of the two-story parking garages at the base of the new Alcoa Building at Clay and Front Streets. The intent of the formal plan was to create the effect of an outdoor sculpture museum around the building. Two large square plazas are centered on the east-west axis. The monumental fountain by the Australian fountain-designer Robert Woodward is aligned with the Alcoa Building’s main entrance in the east plaza. The centerpiece of each side is a sleek one-story pavilion of glass and brick with rectilinear lawn panels divided by wide concrete paths. A restaurant operates out of the east pavilion, while a bank occupies the west plaza on the heavily vegetated edge along Battery Street. The plazas are flanked by smaller sculpture courts that contain works of artists Henry Moore, Charles Perry, and Marino Marini and Jan Peter Stern.
At the northern end of the development lies Sydney G. Walton Square, a private two-acre enclave of undulating lawn and groves set at ground level that was built as part of the Center and is maintained by it. The park is named after the San Francisco banker and cultural leader, and was created to bring more public art to the area. The Square is a popular lunch and picnic area for residents and nearby office workers. Vertical elements, including the ring of cast-bronze columns in the fountain “Fountain of Four Seasons” by Francois Stahly draws one’s gaze upwards to the towers. A ring of poplars—since removed—once reminded the relaxing crowds of Rousseau’s tomb and the romantic appreciation of landscape. Other works of public art now located here are by Jim Dine (“Big Heart on the Rock”), Marisol Escobar (“Portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe”), George Rickey (“Two Open Rectangles”), Joan Brown (“Pine Tree Obelisk”), Benny Bufano (“The Penguins”), and Francois Stahly (Fountain of Four Seasons). An old arch from the Colombo Market also resides in the park. It is the only remaining structure from the old Golden Gateway.
Collaborators
Artist: Francois Stahly
Fountain: Robert Woodward
