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Building History

The Children's Home Society of California office in San Francisco, CA, was designed by Henrik Bull, Partner-in-Charge. Herand M. der Sarkissian was the Bull Field Volkmann Stockwell Associate-in-Charge. Other design team members included Marion, Cerbatos and Tomasi, Mechanical/Electrical Engineers and Elvin C. Stendell, General Contractor.

The small office building occupied a street corner in a San Francisco's Presidio Heights neighborhood, filled with 19th century Queen Anne residences. The design was calibrated to minimize intrustions of form or scale on the existing urban fabric. Charles King Hoyt wrote in an Architectural Records Building Types Study of Small Office Buildings in 1978: "Contrasted to the designs of some other projects in this study, architects Bull Field Volkmann Stockwell's design for San Francisco's Children's Home Society does not have to establish a desirable neighborhood precedent. Instead, it fits into a pleasant existing neighborhood by not asserting its identity, and by respecting an existing small-scale pattern that has been established by the vertical rhythms of adjacent Victorian houses. Such a 'quiet' design was desirable for the client, a nonprofit group that did not want any sort of attention-getting image because of the very nature of its functions. Childen's Home Society is an adoption agency which places orphans all over California, after first interviewing both the children and the prospective foster parents in this headquarters building. The rooms are used for not only administration by for the interviews and for meetings between the parents and children. Aside from the relatively small size of the enclosed building (some 7,500 square feet), the small-scale vertical image is further reinforced both by the indentation of the structure at its corners and by projecting laminated 'fins' which screen the sun and make interior shades or curtains unnecessary. Another way in chich the visual size is diminished is the progressive setback of the lower floors, which is a function of the way in which the Society's program was distributed. But perhaps the most dramatic contribution to the existing fabric of the neighborhood is the way in which parking is accommodated at the ground level under the enclosed structure instead of in open spaces that would have left a 'hole' in the continuity of the adjacent buildings' fronts." (See Charles King Hoyt, "Small Office Buildings: A Public Agency that Fits into a Residential Neighborhood," Architectural Record, vol. 163, no. 4, 04/1978, pp. 132-133.)

Building Notes

The building continued the unassertive architectural approach begun by the first and second generations of Bay Region designers, figures such as Ernest Coxhead and William Wurster. The building had a minimal form that did not stand out too much in context, in part because of its earthtoned skin of stained redwood boards. The building had this redwood siding applied diagonally, a design preference that originated in the Bay Area work of MLTW and Bull Field Volkmann Stockwell, among others, and became widespread nationally in the 1970s and early 1980s.

PCAD id: 24392