Rincon Center facts for kids
Rincon Annex
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Rincon Center in May 2006
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Location | 101--199 Mission St., San Francisco, California |
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Area | 1.9 acres (0.77 ha) |
Built | 1940 |
Built by | George A. Fuller Construction Co. |
Architect | Gilbert Stanley Underwood |
Architectural style | Streamline Moderne |
NRHP reference No. | 79000537 |
Quick facts for kids Significant dates |
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Added to NRHP | November 16, 1979 |
Rincon Center is a complex of shops, restaurants, offices, and apartments in South of Market in Downtown San Francisco, California. It includes two buildings, one of which is the 1940 Rincon Annex former post office building, and comprises a city block near the Embarcadero, bounded by Mission, Howard, Spear, and Steuart Streets.
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Rincon Annex
The original Rincon Annex building is a former post office, designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood in the Streamline Moderne style and completed in 1940. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The exterior is decorated with stone relief friezes of dolphins above the doorways and windows.
Murals
The interior features the History of San Francisco mural series, comprising 27 tempera-on-gesso murals painted by the Russian immigrant artist Anton Refregier from 1941 to 1948 under the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the United States Department of the Treasury. The murals, in the social realism style, depict the history of California and San Francisco's role in it. As they were completed immediately following World War II, they generated fierce controversies. Refregier's detractors criticized his artistic style and questioned his political leanings. The controversy eventually reached the U.S. Congress, where critics called for the murals to be destroyed. The murals led to the preservation of the post office lobby as part of the Rincon Center development.
1980s expansion
In the 1980s the building was made available by the United States Postal Service for development acquisition, and was developed into a mixed-use center by a partnership headed by Perini Land & Development Company. The lead designer was Scott Johnson of Pereira Associates, the firm founded by William Pereira, designer of the Transamerica Pyramid. The complex was completed in 1988.
The Rincon Annex building was topped with two new stories of offices and opened up to create a five-story atrium topped by a 200-foot (61 m) long skylight with a food court on the lower level. A new 23-story mixed-use building on the south side of the block contains a new post office, offices, and 320 apartments in twin towers rising from the commercial levels.
The Rain Cloud installation art work in the atrium was designed by the contemporary artist Doug Hollis and consisted of a continuous 85-foot (26 m) column of water drops falling from an eight-foot by eight-foot acrylic glass box at ceiling level perforated with 4,000 holes. It was removed in an early 2020s renovation that also removed an Art Deco-inspired frieze by Richard Haas on recent California history from the atrium and installed vegetated panels.
Until the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco City Guides led walking tours of the Rincon Annex murals.
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Refregier mural, Panel #3, "Sir Francis Drake"