Folger Coffee Company Building
- Style
- Renaissance Revival
- City
- San Francisco, CA
The Folger Coffee Company Building at 101 Howard Street was built in 1904 as headquarters for J. A. Folger & Company, and stayed the coffee firm's main office until Procter & Gamble bought the brand in 1963. The five-story-plus-basement Renaissance Revival building is unusual for having survived both the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes intact.
the building
Pilings that outlasted two quakes. The building's earthquake survival owes to its foundation: wooden pilings driven about forty feet into San Francisco Bay fill with a steam-driven pile driver, a construction method its NRHP designation credits directly for the structure's resilience in both 1906 and 1989.
A university's return downtown. The University of San Francisco bought the building on August 2, 2011 for almost $37 million, bringing the university back to a downtown footprint. The building holds 83,500 square feet of rentable office space and has no LEED certification, typical for its era.
the style
The Renaissance Revival design clothed a coffee company's headquarters in the same classical vocabulary favored by early-1900s banks and insurers, a visual claim to permanence and respectability.
More on Renaissance Revivalsignificance
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 21, 1996, cited specifically for surviving both the 1906 and 1989 San Francisco earthquakes.
nearby
- Rincon Center
- Audiffred Building
- Pacific Gas and Electric Company General Office Building and Annex
- Salesforce Tower
- Matson Building
- Hyatt Regency San Francisco