Every Apartment Lobby on Greenwich Street
It is an ambitious undertaking I know, but what Ed Ruscha did for the service stations of America I aim to do for the apartment lobbies of San Francisco. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of...
View ArticleEvery Apartment Lobby that Faces Huntington Park
Facing Huntington Park is a row of apartment houses that serve as San Francisco’s answer to Central Park West. If you move just one block off the park frontage, the elegance diminishes and the doormen...
View ArticleThe Mid-Century Apartment Lobbies of Chestnut Street
After Ed Ruscha published his groundbreaking 1963 survey “Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations,” he should have come to Chestnut Street and started shooting the apartment lobbies. The block across from Moscone...
View ArticleThe Christmas Lobbies of Jones Street Nob Hill
The peak of Nob Hill is at the intersection of Sacramento and Jones streets, behind Grace Cathedral. Moving north from there on Jones it plateaus into a flat block of apartment buildings that look...
View ArticleEvery Apartment Lobby on Pacific Avenue
The next time traffic backs up on Franklin or Gough, the main north/south routes out of the city, pull off at Pacific Avenue and park the car. Then walk this one block looking through the glass door...
View ArticleApartment Lobbies fit for Dashiell Hammett
At the top of California Street sits the most stylish row of old apartment house lobbies on Nob Hill. It starts at 1201 California, known as the “Cathedral Building” where Brigid O’Shaughnessy stayed...
View ArticleApartment Lobbies of Vallejo Street
If you walk along Vallejo Street, heading west, you will come upon a row of slender mid-rise apartment houses with side entrances and lobbies worth seeing. It only lasts two blocks, from Gough to...
View ArticleBrocklebank Lobby Sets the Standard
The Brocklebank lobby looks the same as it did when Herb Caen walked out the door for the last time, nearly 20 years ago. The Brocklebank was built in 1926 and the lobby is so good that it makes all...
View ArticlePeeking into the Apartment Lobbies on Taylor Street
At the top of Nob Hill, moving north past Grace Cathedral, Nob Hill drops into a saddle that rises again to meet Russian Hill. If you walk it, along Taylor Street, it gets quiet past Sacramento Street,...
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