SF Ferry Building

This is San Francisco’s clock tower on the Embarcadero Ferry Building.  It was opened in 1898.  Before the bridges were put in over the bay, everyone commuted to San Francisco via ferry, and you can still take the ferry to Oakland today.  The building went through a long restoration from being mutilated by 1970’s office building designers, and it’s only been open in the modern era since 2003, despite having survived all (1906, 1989) earthquakes known to San Francisco without damage, when the double decker highway on the other side of the street famously pancaked in 1989.  Now it hosts a whole bunch of delicious looking super expensive weird food.  (the website prominently features jars of bee pollen and rosemary raisin scones)    The clock tower itself is 245 feet tall, and you guessed it, was designed in my favorite Beaux Arts Style by Arthur Page Brown, who designed the Crocker Building  , and the Coit Tower , and the Durham-cathedral-style Trinity Episcopal Church , among other things.  As you can see, talented guy.  They demolished that Crocker Building in the sixties to put up some soulless square skyscraper, like total barbarians.  Arthur Page Brown died at age 37 of a ‘runaway horse and buggy accident’ in 1896 and he never got to see his Ferry Building completed.   Incidentally, Mr. Crocker also died of a ‘runaway horse and buggy accident.’  Henry Ford invented the self-propelled ethanol two-cylinder engine ’Ford Quadricycle’ that same year, 1896.   Look at that swanky dude with his smirk and bowler hat. 

You will never look that cool, Xander.