San Francisco - Alison Bing [76]
Get the lowdown on California history at this exhibition space devoted entirely to the state’s history. Portions of the museum’s vast collection – think half-a-million-plus photographs, paintings by famous Californians and myriad ephemera and artifacts – are showcased in exhibits that rotate every 18 months. You might see Jack London’s flask or then-and-now shots of famous California sights in century-old paintings hung beside contemporary photographs of the same place.
Bibliophiles: don’t miss the old-fashioned research library ( noon-5pm Wed-Fri), which puts rare books, photos and manuscripts right in your hand. The library has the definitive collection on the American Civil Liberties Union and the People’s Temple, among other California-centric subjects. Call ahead if you want to research a specific topic so staff can pull the appropriate materials from the vault.
CROWN POINT PRESS Map
415-974-6273; www.crownpoint.com; 20 Hawthorne St; admission free; 10am-6pm Mon-Sat; 10, 12, 14, 30, 45, 76
Bet you didn’t think anyone could capture Chuck Close’s giant portraits, Wayne Thiebaud’s Pop Art pastries, or Australian Aboriginal artist Dorothy Napangardi’s dreamings on paper. Yet here they are: color woodcut portraits produced by carving and printing 51 separate blocks of wood; cream-pie tinged pale-blue within glass pastry cases, captured in a color gravure; and salt tracings of Mina Mina in mesmerizing sugar-lift etchings. Such are the mysterious powers of Crown Point Press printmakers, who work with artists to turn singular visions into large-scale paper multiples.
WPA MURALS AT RINCON ANNEX POST OFFICE Map
101 Spear St; admission free; 2, 7, 14, 21, 71, F, J, K, L, M, N; & Embarcadero
Russian-born painter Anton Refregier won the Works Project Administration’s largest commission to depict the history of Northern California in 1941, but WWII intervened. When Refregier began again in 1945, he was lobbied by interest groups to present their version of history, and it took three years and 92 changes to make everyone happy. The murals were deemed ‘communist’ by McCarthyists in 1953, but they’re now protected as a National Landmark.
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ON THE HORIZON: DOWNTOWN’S NEW SKYLINE
Until the 1970s, SF skyscrapers topped out below 20 stories. Then came the boom. New towers started popping up around Montgomery St. Some, like the Transamerica Pyramid, were met with mixed approval. When the Bank of America Building – the first non-white skyscraper in SF – went up at 555 California St, San Franciscans dubbed the amorphous sculpture at its base ‘the black heart of the banker.’ The final straw was Fontana Apartments, which rose on the waterfront, east of Van Ness Ave, blocking Russian Hill residents’ bay views. Locals went ballistic. ‘No Manhattanization of San Francisco’ became the rallying cry, and for decades development stopped.
Twenty years later, the dot-com boom of the late ’90s sparked huge real-estate demand, and before anyone could shout Manhattan, land had been quietly re-zoned. Massive new towers began springing up South of Market. In the old days SoMa was all light-industrial buildings, with box cars parked on Harrison St. No self-respecting straight person would be caught dead here after dark. To see what it looked like, head to 12th St between Howard and Folsom Sts and find the rusting corrugated-metal building on the east side of the street.
Now walk to Mission St and look east. Behold the new Downtown. At 888 Howard St (at 5th St), the Intercontinental Hotel draws criticism for its Miami-blue glass that doesn’t match the pewter-gray SF sky. Locals call it the ‘Listerine Bottle.’ And then there’s One Rincon Hill, directly at the foot of the Bay Bridge, which looks like a giant ionizing air filter, loudly proclaiming that all height-restriction bets are off.
It’s not all bad news. Some of the interplays between past and present are visually arresting, such as on the plaza in front