Structure Type: built works - commercial buildings - office buildings; built works - commercial buildings - stores

Designers: Dinwiddie Construction, Incorporated (firm); Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), San Francisco, CA (firm); William Starrett Dinwiddie Sr. (building contractor); John Ogden Merrill (architect); Nathaniel Alexander Owings (architect); Louis Skidmore Sr. (architect)

Dates: constructed 1987-1988

24 stories, total floor area: 333,000 sq. ft.

505 Montgomery Street
Financial District, San Francisco, CA 94111-6529

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This quintessential Post Modern building displays an assemblage of historicizing elements. An Art Deco base and shaft transitions to a Second Empire Mansard roof topped by a spire (328-feet high) that is a miniature version of New York's Empire State Building (1930-1931). The reference to the Empire State building shrunk to a model's size is a playful touch common during the 1980s and early 1990s. Architect Skidmore Owings and Merrill, LLP, selected granite quarried at Barre, VT, to clad the exterior. The Japanese real estate investment trust Mitsui Fudosan (with its American headquarters in New York, NY) developed the building in 1988 but sold it in 1999.

PCAD id: 16488