Ghirardelli Square
- Architects
- Lawrence Halprin William Wurster
- Year
- 1964
- City
- San Francisco, CA
Domenico Ghirardelli bought this entire city block in 1893 to headquarter his chocolate company. When the Golden Grain Macaroni Company acquired Ghirardelli in the early 1960s and moved operations to San Leandro, the square went up for sale and faced demolition for an apartment building. San Franciscan William M. Roth and his mother, Lurline Matson Roth, bought the land in 1962 to save it, hiring landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and the firm Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons to convert the historic brick chocolate factory into a mixed-use retail square, completed in 1964.
the building
Factory into marketplace. The Roths' 1962 rescue turned the historic brick buildings of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company into an integrated retail square, which at its peak held more than 40 specialty shops and restaurants, some of which still operate today.
Halprin's landscape hand. Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, working alongside the firm Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, shaped the square's public spaces as part of the 1962-1964 conversion, one of the era's earliest large-scale adaptive-reuse retail projects.
the architect
Lawrence Halprin was the landscape architect on the project, working with William Wurster's firm, Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, to convert Ghirardelli's historic industrial buildings for retail use rather than design new structures from scratch.
significance
A portion of Ghirardelli Square was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as the Pioneer Woolen Mills and D. Ghirardelli Company, and the site is also a National Historic Landmark, recognized as a pioneering example of converting an industrial complex into retail space.
nearby
- San Francisco Art Institute
- Alhambra Theatre
- McElroy Octagon House
- Feusier Octagon House
- Saints Peter and Paul Church, San Francisco
- Haas–Lilienthal House