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Overview

Occupying the northern tip of the triangle bounded by Kearny Street on the west, Columbus Avenue on the east and Jackson Street on the south, the Sentinel Building was erected by the courteous, colorful and corrupt San Francisco politican, Abe Ruef, in 1906-1907. The start of construction and its end straddled the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, a rare feat made possible by the building's steel frame. An elegant North Beach landmark, it has housed Ruef's Union Labor Party machine, a notable nightclub, the hungry i, and an important motion picture production company, American Zoetrope, founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.

Building History

The elegant lawyer and gradually corrupt political organizer Abe Ruef (1864-1936) commissioned the architectural firm of Salfield and Kohlberg to design this flat-iron-shaped commercial building just before the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 04/18-19/1906. Salfield and Kohlberg designed Ruef's tower for a triangular peninsula of land in the city's predominantly Italian-American neighborhood of North Beach. The building was begun prior to the 1906 Earthquake and Fire and survived its worst effects to be finished the following year. The building's form recalled that of New York's Fuller Building (aka the Flatiron Building, D.H. Burnham, 1902), although this San Francisco building had more traditional projecting oriels and a corner cupola, suggesting 19th century models in the US and Europe. Both buildings shared a row of arched windows terminating the fenestration just below the cornice. The San Francisco building had a very distinctive skin of patinated copper and simple Gothic detailing on the spandrels of its oriel windows, very unlike the Neo-classical styling of the New York building. While Burnham's building had a taut, rounded-triangular form, its skin had a very densely textured and animated surface, filled with terra cotta ornamentation, some motifs Classical, some not. The New York building's exterior surfaces had a more active, Neo-Baroque character than those of the Sentinel Building. The San Francisco building had more projecting formal variety, with its array of oriels, in line with the city's Italianate and Queen Anne architecture of the 19th century.

Ruef, who developed an interest in politics early in his life, began as a reformer, eager to root corruption, rampant in San Francisco city government, out of local politics. In 1901, he formed the Union Labor Party, a populist political movement that appealed to the anti-immigrant attitudes within San Francisco's working class and labor unions, as a way of gaining electoral clout over existing moneyed (and corrupt) interests in the city. Over time, the idealist Ruef began to bend during an increasingly moralistic era. He came to enjoy the kickbacks and bribes paid to him by gambling parlor and brothel owners and began increasing the scope of his corruption by selling the influence of his Union Labor Party politicians for city contracts. In 1907, the Sentinel Building's uppermost floor had become the political headquarters of Ruef's Union Labor Party. During the course of the 1890s and 1900s, Ruef made many political enemies, and his downfall was swift. In both 1908 and 1910, a San Francisco court convicted him of bribery charges and he ended up serving four-and-a-half-years of a fourteen-year sentence. He died impoverished in the 1930s.

The building's basement housed the hungry i nightclub by about 1950, first operated by a German refugee, Eric "Big Daddy" Nord (1919–1989), and later by Harry Charles Banducci (1922-2007). It featured folk singers and comedians, and catered to the hip beatniks of San Francisco. The hungry i operated in the Sentinel Building between c. 1950 and 1954, until Banducci moved it to the International Hotel #3 at 599 Jackson Street. A number of show business acts became famous performing at the hungry i, including comedian Mort Sahl (1927-2021), folk singer Stan Wilson (1922-2005), and folk singers, the Kingston Trio.

The architect Henrik Bull advised his clients Robert Moor (d. 1997) and Nella Van Ginkel Moor (1915-2006), for whom he designed a cabin in the Sierra, to buy the landmark when it came up for sale in 1958. Bull had operated his office in the Sentinel Building between at least 1956 and 1962. The Moors had come from Holland but lived in Asia for much of their lives, including in the highly cosmopolitan city of Shanghai during the 1930s. During World War II, they fought with the Dutch Resistance against the Nazis, but were caught and imprisoned. Rob Moor was sent to Auschwitz, and Nella to Ravensbrueck. Miraculously, both survived their concentration camp ordeals. After the war, they returned to Hong Kong to operate a successful import-export company and also lived in Singapore and Switzerland. They relocated to San Francisco in 1957 where they invested in real estate and operated multiple businesses. (See Allan Temko, SF Gate.com, "Rob Moor," published 06/16/1997, accessed 08/14/2024.) The Moors remained in the Bay Area until 1992, when they relocated to Yardley, PA, where Rob died in 1997. Nella passed away eight years later in NJ. (See Agra Cremation.com, "Nella Moor, April 12, 1915-December 9, 2006," published 12/2006, accessed 08/14/2024.

The Kingston Trio later returned to purchase the freshly renovated building from the Moors in about 1960, used the "Columbus Tower," as renamed by the Moors, for about twelve years, c. 1960 until 1972. At that time, they sold the notable building to film director Francis Ford Coppola (born 04/07/1939), who had just struck box-office paydirt with the release of his legendary movie, The Godfather, in that year. Coppola moved in his production company, American Zoetrope, into the building, where it has remained to the present. During Coppola's ownership, two cafes, the Cafe Niebaum-Coppola and later Cafe Zoetrope, operated in a first-floor corner storefront. Some contemporary San Franciscans refer to the building as "Coppola's Cupola." (See Noe Hill in San Francisco.com, "San Francisco Landmarks: San Francisco Landmark #33 Sentinel Building," accessed 08/14/2024.)

Building Notes

The Architectural Forum illustrated the renovations of the Sentinel Building.

The architect of a newer, enighboring building at 900 Kearny Street emulated, in a more Modern vocabulary, to update the bay windows and cupolas of the Sentinel Building.

Alteration

San Francisco-based architect Henrik Bull presided over the restoration of the Sentinel Building (later named the Columbus Building) in 1958 for Rob and Nella Moor. Bull was an early advocate of adaptive reuse in the Bay Area and the West Coast. In Seattle, by the early 1960s, architect Ralph Anderson also began rehabilitating derelict buildings in the Pioneer Square Neighborhood of Downtown.