Overview

Completed in late 1983 on a site in San Francisco's Civic Center, the $13.8 million San Francisco Ballet Building was, in the words of New York Times writer, Jennifer Dunning, "...the first building in the United States to be designed and constructed exclusively for the use of a major ballet institution." (See Jennifer Dunning, New York Times.com, "San Francisco Ballet Opens New Headquarters," published 12/17/1983, accessed 10/04/2023.) The organization began as the San Francisco Opera Ballet in 1933, hardly a moment of peak arts funding in the US. The Ballet detached from the Opera company by 1942. The architect Beverly Willis spent about three years consulting with San Francisco Ballet dancers and administrators and toured other ballet facilities before completing her design. The SF Ballet has used the building for meetings, classes, rehearsals and recuperative therapy, but performs at the nearby San Francisco War Memorial Opera House completed in 1932.

Building History

Construction on the San Francisco Ballet Building began in 05/1982 and continued until 12/1983. Beverly A. Willis (1928-2023), a San Francisco-based architect and interior designer, had design responsibility for the structure. From a programmatic standpoint, the San Francisco Ballet Building would be unique in the US, and therefore Willis needed to tour the facilities of other dance troupes in Europe for inspiration. The building's exterior proportions and scale were meant to be contextual, to harmonize with the Beaux-Arts Classical buildings of the War Memorial, City Hall and other landmarks of the Civic Center. The building's styling was strictly Modern, however, done in a spare idiom typical of Late Modernism. The simplicity of its forms and its unadorned concrete finish owed a debt to 1960s Brutalism, although it was not quite as ponderous as some Béton brut landmarks. The building's crispness and strength reflected those roots in the work of Le Corbusier and others.

Building Notes

The four-floor facility contained eight spaces for rehearsal and classes. Each one of these rooms had towering 15-foot-tall ceilings measured a spacious 56-feet by 40-feet. Ceilings needed to be tall in order to accomodate periodic leaps and lifts in rehearsals. Top floor studios also had the advantage of flexible walls, allowing the spaces to expand or contract in response to the needs of the perfomance. Dunning noted in her New York Times.com article on the building's opening in 1984: "There are also administrative offices, rooms where students receive physical therapy and can work out with gymnastic equipment, and a library equipped with sophisticated audio-visual equipment and student carrels. Additional multi-purpose rooms have been designed for conferences and academic and choreographic study. And the new headquarters also boasts prop and shoe-storage rooms, separate lounges and shower and locker facilities for the students and company members, and a computer room and ballet shop open to the public. A ground-floor studio may be used by community groups, and the association plans now on greatly increased programs to reach the community." (See Jennifer Dunning, New York Times.com, "San Francisco Ballet Opens New Headquarters," published 12/17/1983, accessed 10/04/2023.)

PCAD id: 24827