The Central Embarcadero Piers Historic District, comprised of Piers 1, 1½, 3 and 5 is one of the largest surviving complexes along San Francisco’s Embarcadero. As part of the original City Beautiful movement, begun in 1905, these piers retain the power to communicate the monumentality and grace of the design’s original vision.
As the United States population began to grow at an increasing rate during the latter half of the 19th Century, the idea of architecture and the creation of functional as well as aesthetically magnificent public areas came into the forefront. As the United States became economically competitive with the Europe, the City Beautiful movement, led by architect Daniel Burnham, aimed to develop architecture with equally compelling and creative design structures.
San Francisco developed at an astonishing pace following the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, causing San Francisco to become the largest city and busiest port of the West Coast. For years, the city had been filling in the bay in order to create more land mass. However, the edge of the bay had never been coordinated with the rest of the city. The City Beautiful movement assisted in this development by creating a boulevard to create a continuous urban edge and a space for civic aggrandizement.
During the rise of San Francisco commerce, the 1906 Earthquake and Fire not only devastated the city, but provided an opportunity for rebirth and redesign, lending additional support to the City Beautiful Plan. Although this initiative originally focused solely on the Civic Center, the 1914 opening of the Panama Canal triggered a rise in the interest of developing the city’s waterfront. The Panama Canal reduced sailing time from New York to San Francisco and promised great changes for the city. Thus, San Francisco’s harbor was to become not only more efficient but also more beautiful, as it was to become the gateway to tourists as the Ferry Building was to become the city’s most common arrival point.
With construction spanning over a decade in length, led by Chief Engineer of the State Harbor Commission, Frank G. White, Piers 1½, 3 and 5 opened in 1918. Unlike the piers south of the Ferry Building that were designed in the Mission and Gothic styles, the piers north of the Ferry Building were built in the Beaux-Arts style, similar to New York’s Chelsea Piers. Pier 1½ is unique along the Embarcadero because, unlike similar-looking facilities, it was designed specifically for passenger traffic.
The famous Delta King and Delta Queen provided overnight connections between San Francisco and Sacramento from Pier 1½, making it an important gateway for public travel to the interior of the state. Pier 3 and Pier 5 served primarily freight shipping, with a colorful variety of companies sharing the bulkhead office and warehouse spaces and the huge transit sheds which originally extended the full length of the finger piers extending more than 700 feet east from the wharf on the Embarcadero.
After the Second World War, the piers fell to disuse due to the ports in Oakland, Alameda and Richmond which were better equipped to respond to the conversion to containerized shipping. Piers 1½ and 5 were harbingers of the drive to find new uses for buildings which form a valuable part of the city’s environment. The former Passenger Waiting Room of Pier 1½ was converted into an architect’s waterfront office, and the bulkheads of Piers 1½ and 5 were used as offices for
prominent firms in the fields of law, financial services and design. While many of the piers were demolished, Piers 1½, 3 and 5 remain the most visible from the Ferry Building and Market Street, still the main thoroughfare of the city. The Waterfront Land Use Plan, created as a citizens’ initiative in 1990, reserves the Port’s properties to the expansion of maritime operations, and encourages creation of new public access, recreation and open space along the Bay. The Plan also identifies sites for compatible new commercial development that will increase public enjoyment of the waterfront, help subsidize maritime industries, fund new public access and open spaces, and help stem the continuing deterioration of Port property. The demolition of the double-decked Embarcadero Freeway in 1991 created an opportunity for the Port of San Francisco to reunite the city with the waterfront. The Port created public access, parks, walks and plazas for new residents of the Embarcadero and the nearby Financial District, to finally utilize the magnificent waterfront area. Thus, these piers have become inextricably linked with many first impressions of San Francisco and continue to serve as a gateway, linking San Francisco’s past with its triumphant future.
