John Carl Warnecke and Associates Buildings in San Francisco (early 1970s)

One of the John Carl Warnecke and Associations first projects of the 1970s was the addition of a tower to the Hilton Hotel at 201 Mason Street.

photo source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

At 46 stories, this brutalist structure dwarfed (and continues to dwarf) the surrounding structures in the neighborhood.

"Model of the New Hilton Tower, John Carl Warnecke and Henri Lewin display replica"

(image source: San Francisco Examiner December 23, 1968)

Work commenced on the tower in January 1969 and wrapped up by 1971. This addition brought the total number of rooms to 1800, making it the largest hotel west of Chicago.  The stark and windowless north and south faces of the building are made out of silvery-white hued aluminum, which Schwarzer has described as "sensuous." 

The Hilton's special features included a glassed-in restaurant at the top and an outdoor bridge across to the swimming pool atop the original hotel. Herb Caen quoted a rival architect from the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill firm who remarked dismissively of Warnecke's tower: "I don't think of it as a building, I think of it as a convention machine." Warnecke's firm designed a second 19 floor tower in 1987 for the Hilton and also added a domed clock tower. A more recent appraisal by John King, the San Francisco Chronicle's architecture critic, described the Hilton as a "high-rise [that] stands its ground with a quiet sheen."

Around this time John Warnecke and Associates, in collaboration with Clement Chen, worked on a second high rise hotel -- the Holiday Inn at 750 Kearny Street (now also a Hilton).

An early sketch for the Redevelopment Agency's Chinese Cultural and Trade Center by Clement Chen and Associates and Dartmond Cherk, ca. 1965-6

The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency spearheaded this project which was to be a joint Chinese Cultural and Trade Center and hotel. The agency treated this as a follow up to the culture and trade center they had built as part of the Japantown redevelopment in Western Addition. They set up an arrangement where the private developers of the hotel would pay for the construction of the cultural center who would only pay a $1 annual rent for decades to follow. Despite this community benefit, there were protests that this City-owned plot of land, that had been the site of the Hall of Justice, was being designated for a business and not public housing. 

The original design is credited to Clement Chen & Associates and Dartmond Cherk. The latter was hired by John Carl Warnecke and Associates giving their firm partial credit for the design. Not long after the hotel's completion, Allen Temko, the Chronicle's architecture critic, arguing against a remodel plan for the City of Paris store by Warnecke's firm, used his article to excoriate all of the architect's tall structures. 

San Francisco Hall of Justice viewed from Portsmouth Square (source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection).

Temko lamented the demolition of the Hall of Justice which he extolled as a "neo-classical palazzo." He complained that the adjacent "Portsmouth Plaza, where the American flag was first raised in San Francisco" had "suffered irreparable harm" from this destruction. He complained that Chen and Warnecke and "erected an odd concoction called the 'Chinese Cultural Center,' which is nothing more than the Redevelopment Agency's euphemism for a Holiday Inn with a spare room for Chinese artifacts."

Holiday Inn and pedestrian bridge at Portsmouth Square, 1973 (San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

Temko's rebuke continued:

This bulbous slab, from whose roof non-structural ventilating ducts emerge like tumors, exhibits just about every mistake that can be committed in civic design. It arrogantly turns a narrow side to the square, squirting a very mistaken bridge across Kearny street into its center, depriving the tiny playground of light, and almost incidentally, ruining the Kearney street vista toward Telegraph Hill... If this were not enough, the Holiday Inn has also ripped open a hole in the eastern flank of the square...

Clement Chen defended the structure in a letter to the editor: "The Holiday Inn on Kearney is a large structure and therefore monumental, as it should be. If it appears arrogant to Temko, so be it. What great architecture in the past appears otherwise?" Although Chen took sole responsibility for the design, Temko claimed that Warnecke had shown him sketches that demonstrated the contribution of his firm to the design.

Whether or not the design is Chen's or Warnecke's (or Cherk's), the building's geometric regularity and lack of ornament is consistent with the brutalist style of other buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke and Associates.

Gebhard, et al, dismiss it as "a hotel with token culture in the base." Schwarzer is a little kinder, describing it as a "concrete behemoth" but admitting that it's in "the best of the brutalism style." 

In 1986, Examiner columnist Bill Mandel held an "edifice contest"--an invitation to readers to submit their choices of the most beautiful and the ugliest buildings in San Francisco. John Carl Warnecke and Associates rated two ugly "beasts": the Hilton Hotel discussed above at number 6, and the Tishman Building at 525 Market Street close behind at number 7.

525 Market Street, photographed by Philip Oldfield (image source: Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat)

Later known as First Market Tower and now simply as 525 Market Street, at the time it was completed it was the second tallest building in  San Francisco. (It's presently ranked #20 in height). 

Allen Temko took an even harsher view of this building which he describes as "an insensate skyscraper" that "is about as clumsy an essay in concrete-covered shell as we have in the city." Splendid Survivors, a survey of downtown San Francisco architecture from 1979 describes it as "an immense blockbuster without scale clues, without any gesture beyond a perfunctory little sliver of a plaza. The worst of the 'new Market Street' buildings."

image source: Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects Inc.

525 Market Street shows the seem geometric regularity as many of the Warnecke firm's other structures. The building is 38 floors tall.  35 of the stories have floor-to-ceiling windows with twelve banks of three windows on the north and south faces and ten banks of three windows each on the east and west faces.  Its start regularity and lack of ornamentation may have made it an unattractive outlier when it was built, but since then it has been joined by many other brutalist companions and holds its own as a structure.

Bibliography:

"At Last, A New Look for the Hilton," San Francisco Chronicle August 26, 1985.

Caen, Herb, "Have a Weird Day," San Francisco Chronicle September 7, 1971.

Canter, Donald, "Chinese Culture Finds a Home-Finally Project Begins; Center to House Auditorium, Galleries," San Francisco Chronicle January 28, 1973.

Canter, Donald, "Giant Market St. Skyscraper Job Will Start Soon," San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle January 17, 1971

Chen, Clement, Jr., "He Doesn't Agree" [Letters to the Editor], San Francisco Chronicle September 3, 1974.

"Chinese Center Gets Go Ahead," Engineers News December 1967.

"A Chinese Center Planned on Coast," New York Times December 3, 1967.

"Chinese Projects Blossom in California Cities," AIA Journal February 1968.

Chinese Cultural and Trade Center: Development Proposals (San Francisco Redevelopment Agency,| [1965 or 1966].

Corbett, Michael R., Splendid Survivors: San Francisco's Downtown Architectural Heritage (California Living Books, 1979).

"43 Story Tower at S.F. Hotel," San Francisco Chronicle December 24, 1968.

Gebhard, David, et al., The Guide to Architecture in San Francisco and Northern California, Rev. ed. (Gibbs M. Smith, 1985).

Grieg, Michael, "Pomp And Protest At a New Hotel," San Francisco Chronicle January 14, 1971.

"High at The Hilton: Cocktail Bar on Top," San Francisco Examiner December 23, 1968.

King, John, "Clean And Cool Above The Fray," San Francisco Chronicle April 4, 2010.

Mandel, Bill, "The Beauties and the Beasts," San Francisco Examiner April 6, 1986.

"'New Look' Hilton Tower Approved," San Francisco Chronicle April 13, 1984.

San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, The Decade Past And The Decade to Come ([San Francisco Redevelopment Agency], 1969).

Schwarzer, Mitchell, San Francisco: Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area: A History & Guide (William Stout Publishers, 2007).

Temko, Allan, "After the City of Paris...," San Francisco Chronicle August 15, 1974.

Temko, Allan, "Dr. Fu Manchu's Plastic Pagoda," San Francisco Magazine May 1971.

Temko, Allan, No Way to Build a Ballpark: And Other Irreverent Essays on Architecture (Chronicle Books, 1993).

St. James Press Reference Dictionaries

Over the past 50 years, St. James Press has published dozens of excellent reference encyclopedias and dictionaries. Several of these heavy tomes are biographical encyclopedias of figures in the arts from the late twentieth century.

Contemporary Architects (1987, 1994 editions)

Contemporary Artists (1977, 1983, 1989, 1996, 2002 editions)
Contemporary Composers (1992)

Contemporary Designers (1984, 1990, 1997)

Contemporary Fashion (1995)

Contemporary Masterworks (1991)

Contemporary Photographers (1982, 1987. 1995)

Contemporary Women Artists (1997)

The Contemporary Arts Series includes a resume-like biography, exhibition history, list of works, list of publications (bibliography), and an introductory essay or personal statement. Because newer editions add and subtract entries on different artists, the earlier editions continue to have value for the researcher. 

Contemporary Masterworks is unique in focusing on individual works of visual art from the 20th century (including art, architecture, photography and design. It devotes one page to a black and white reproduction of the artwork and another page to a descriptive essay and bibliography.

The International Dictionaries published by St. James Press focus on a wider span of history and also provide listings of creative works and a bibliography.  The dictionaries for ballet, modern dance intersperse entries about performers, choreographers and works for the dance. Likewise the International Dictionary of Opera includes entries on individual operas, opera singers and composers.

The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, published across three editions, has separate volumes for films, directors, actors and actresses and writer and production artists.

The International Dictionary of Theatre is published in two volumes, one for plays and the other for playwrights. The International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture is divided into two volumes - one for architects, the other for works of architecture.

International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture (1993)

International Dictionary of Art and Artists (1993)

International Dictionary of Ballet (1993)

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers (1984, 1990, 1997)

International Dictionary of Modern Dance, 1998

International Dictionary of Opera, 1993

International Dictionary of Theatre, 1992

The more recently published St. James Guide to Black Artists shares the same format as the Contemporary Arts Series volumes listed above, but is focused upon artists of Africa and of the African diaspora. Similarly the St. James Guide to Hispanic Artists profiles artists from Latin America or were active there. The St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture is unlike the other reference works discussed here in that it also discusses style and genre in addition to notable performing artists and producers.

St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture (2012)

St. James Guide to Black Artists (1997)

St. James Guide to Hispanic Artists: Profiles of Latino and Latin American Artists (2002)

Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive - Search for Early FM Radio in San Francisco

The Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive is an exciting new database that we are offering to our public. It contains millions of scanned pages from dozens of major publication in the entertainment business including Billboard, Spin, Vibe, Musician, Trouser Press, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, and Film Journal.

To try out the new database we did a search for KALW, the call letters of the the first permanent FM radio station to broadcast west of the Rockies.

Variety, December 4, 1940 from the Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive

San Francisco.--J. E. Morgan, until recently production manager of KSFO, is new head of the radio department at the Samuel Gompers Trade School here. Giving instruction in FM, using the school's new FM transmitter, KALW, as exhibit A.

A photograph of the Samuel Gompers Trade School from our San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection shows radio towers atop the structure. The building is still extant and is part of the City College of San Francisco Mission Campus.

The main purpose of the station was to train public school students to become radio technicians. At this time FM radio was still a very novel technology and there were very few transmitters and receivers.

Variety, August 10, 1940.

KALW was preceded by a temporary FM station - W10XLV - transmitting programs 15 hours a day during the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in August 1940. 

On July 17, 1940, the Federal Communications Commission "granted special temporary authority" for W10XLV to operate "on an experimental non-interference basis" during the month August, coinciding with the convention. The "X" within the call letters meant that the station was experimental. Variety magazine informed its readers that Radio Engineering Labs in New York sent the equipment that was installed above the Palace Hotel. AM station KSFO supplied the programming - in those days, KSFO also broadcast their programs from the Palace Hotel. 

The following year, a Variety article announced that KALW would be carrying educational program from the CBS radio network.

Variety, October 29, 1941

The American School of the Air was a half hour long educational program that ran from 1930 through 1948. In some school districts it was required listening schools and at times was incorporated into the school curriculum.

With the cooperation of CBS affiliate KSFO, the program was broadcast by the San Francisco Unified School District's station KALW into FM receivers that were placed in classrooms around the district.  

A San Francisco Chronicle article reported that ss of August 1941 only George Washington High School had FM receivers with San Francisco Junior College (City College today), Portola Junior High School and Hawthorne Elementary School scheduled to receive theirs soon. At the time these receivers were rare and expensive (they sold for around $100 or the equivalent of more than $2000 today). Is it possible that Samuel Gompers Trade School students also learned how to build FM receivers?

Broadcasting, Telecasting, December 23, 1946

At the outset, FM stations broadcast on 42-44 megacycle band of the radio spectrum. KALW's original frequency was 42.1 megacycles. In 1945, the Federal Communications Commission made a decision to move FM to the frequency range between 88 and 108 megacycles. This became the standard that all FM receiving equipment has followed ever since.  After a temporary move to 44.3 megacycles, in 1948 KALW landed at its present location on the radio dial at 91.7 megacycles.

Boyer, Anne, "Your Little Red Schoolhouse May Be Wired for Sound," San Francisco Chronicle August 30, 1941.

Dunning, John, On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Oxford University Press, 1998).

"Public Notice, July 17, 1940," Federal Communications Commission.

Speegle, Paul, "Those Appeals for Funds Create Quite A Problem, San Francisco Chronicle July 5, 1948.

Sterling, Christopher H. and Michael C. Keith, Sounds of Change: A History of FM Broadcasting in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

The Modern Jazz Quartet

image source: San Francisco Chronicle October 5, 1954

The Modern Jazz Quartet first appeared in San Francisco on October 4, 1954 at the Blackhawk nightclub, 200 Hyde Street. Esteemed San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic, Ralph Gleason, wrote about their appearance:

The Modern Jazz Quartet ... represents the new approach to jazz. Schooled musicians, jazz men, too, they have brought forethought, planning and discipline to their music as well as the extemporaneous fire of jazz improvisations... The members of the group--John Lewis, piano; Percy Heath, bass; Milt Jackson, vibes, and Kenny Clark, drums--are among the most serious of the modern jazz men, and yet the charm of their music is that they are not so serious that they do not have fun.

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz characterizes the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet as "cool jazz" in a "conservative bebop style." They were all, in fact, seasoned bebop musicians who performed in Dizzy Gillespie's band. 

The Modern Jazz Quartet is notable for merging jazz, original a genre of dance music or entertainment, with elements of classical music. In that regard, they along with Duke Ellington and others brought jazz from the dance hall to the concert hall. This genre was sometimes called Third Stream Music.

advertisement from the San Francisco Ballet program

After a stint in the army during World War II, pianist John Lewis studied at the Manhattan School of Music. He soon joined Gillespie's group and later also worked and recorded with Illinois Jacquet, Lester Young and Charlie Parker. He also worked with Miles Davis as a pianist and arranger on the Birth of The Cool sessions in the late 1950s.

Program cover for the San Francisco Ballet's performance of Original Sin

Locally, Lewis collaborated with choreographer Lew Christensen and poet Kenneth Rexroth in the creation of Original Sin, a ballet in two scenes, written for the San Francisco Ballet that premiered on April 14, 1961.

An advertisement in the program details the miniature scores published by MJQ Music Inc., Lewis's imprint.

We have several of the MJQ Music scores in our collection. These include several works by John Lewis:

Excerpts from The Comedy, 1957-1959, for solo piano, 4 trumpets, 4 horns, 2 trombones, tuba, percussion, and double bass.

The Golden Striker: 1957, for solo piano, bass, percussion, 4 trumpets, 4 horns, 2 trombones, and tuba

Jazz Ostinato, For jazz quartet (vibraharp, piano, drums, double bass) and orchestra.

Sketch: For double quartet (1959), for jazz quartet (piano, vibraphone, percussion, and double bass) and string quartet.

The Spiritual, for jazz quartet (vibraharp, piano, drums, double bass) and orchestra.

We offer several Modern Jazz Quartet albums as streaming audio. We also have the four vinyl LP albums available to borrow in the Art, Music & Recreation Center

The Last Concert (Atlantic, 1975). 

More from the Last Concert (Atlantic, 1981).

No Sun in Venice: original film score, by John Lewis (Atlantic, 1958).

Under the Jasmin Tree (Apple, 1968).

Bibliography:

Coady, Christopher. John Lewis and the Challenge of "Real" Black Music (University of Michigan Press, 2016)

Gleason, Ralph, "Oldest and Newest in Jazz In S.F. Spots This Week," San Francisco Chronicle October 7, 1954.

Gleason, Ralph J. Celebrating the Duke, and Louis, Bessie, Billie, Bird, Carmen, Miles, Dizzy, and other Heroes (Little, Brown, 1975).

Owens, Thomas, "Modern Jazz Quartet," in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, edited by Barry Kernfeld (Grove's Dictionaries Inc., 2002).

San Francisco Ballet. Spring Season 1961. Alcazar Theatre [program].

Schuller, Gunther. "Third Stream," in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, edited by Barry Kernfeld (Grove's Dictionaries Inc., 2002).

image source: album jacket for The Last Concert, photograph by David Gahr

John Carl Warnecke and Associates Buildings in San Francisco (1950s-1960s)

Picketers in front the Lane Bryant store in 1957, source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

The earliest evidence of John Carl Warnecke and Associates work in San Francisco dates from the mid-1950s at 55 Geary Street, the former Lane Bryant store. A San Francisco Chronicle article credits him with work on the exterior, although this work is difficult to detect today. The present exterior facade is different than this 1957 photograph.

image source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

Warnecke's next work in San Francisco was on the Federal Office Building #2 (now known as the Phillip Burton Federal Office Building) completed in 1959. Warnecke's firm was one of three firms involved in the design along with with Albert F. Roller, and Stone, Marraccini and Patterson. It's difficult to determine what the respective firms' contributions were. Nevertheless, the exterior share properties that we will see in Warnecke's later work.

Multiple stone columns run the length of the building on all four sides. These are hashed by horizontal lines top to bottom; there are four of these vertical lines for every floor of the building. Between these columns there are additional metallic columns that subdivide the intervening space into four window spaces.  The windows take up the size of two horizontal hash lines and the other two lines are placed above and below as spandrels or buffers between floors. Continuing the theme of four, the long face of the building has seventeen columns creating 16 (four squared) sections.  Furthermore this pattern is executed across 16 stories.

In San Francisco Architecture, Sally Woodbridge and her co-authors dismissed the Federal Building as "A lackluster blockbuster expressing all too well the contemporary scale of government"

The Warnecke firm's next major project was an addition to the French Hospital (now the Kaiser Hospital French campus) which was opened incrementally in 1963 and 1964.  A 1964 Architectural Record article describes the architecture:  

Floor-to-ceiling glass walls of the first floor are recessed behind columns to provide an outdoor shelter related to waiting space in the lobby. 

The front facade is a rhythmic pattern of glass metal between precast concrete panels. Above and below each window are decorative bronzed grills giving the effect of balconies and providing sun control for tall windows.

French Hospital, photographed by Richard E. Persoff (source: Architectual Record 1964)

Around the same time, the Warnecke firm designed the high rise apartments at 1170 Sacramento Street, sometimes known as The Nob Hill, Nob Hill Apartments, or Nob Hill Condominiums.

Above a comparatively ornate lobby floor, this structure employs rectangular repetition and symmetry on a small horizontal scale. An Architectural Record review describes:

In form, the building is a 22-story rectangular tower with arched openings at ground level, and with balconies and bay windows serving to soften the shape of the rectangle above. 

The newly constructed Nob Hill Condominium (source: Architectural Record April 1965)

After working Nob Hill luxury apartments, Warnecke's next San Francisco project was high rise to house seniors commissioned by the City's housing authority.

One hundred and eighty residents attended the dedication Tuesday at the Housing Authority's new senior citizen resident, the Mission Dolores apartments at 1855 15th street. Eneas J. Kane, executive director, said the ten-story apartment cost $1,350,000 and was design by John Charles [sic] Warnecke, the architect. Rents range from $35 to $65 a month. There are 92 units. 

source: San Francisco Chronicle December 9, 1966

Named Mission Dolores Apartments, these apartments are located at 1855 15th Street. This building's front shows more exterior variety than other Warnecke structures but is still based on rectangles and symmetry.

image source: Bridge Housing

Portions of the facade seen from the street are inset.

image source: FineLine Construction

The back of the building, not visible from the street, shows more of the regularity seen with the Federal Building.

A pre-construction drawing of 425 California Street (source: Architectural Record September 1966)

John Carl Warnecke's tallest San Francisco building to that point was built at 425 California Street for the First Savings and Loan Association, a subsidiary of Great Western Financial Corporation. (This corporation was later acquired by Washington Mutual Bank that is now owned by JP Morgan Chase).

"Glass wall construction--with all its advantages of openness, color, reflectivity and drama--gives you, the architect, uncommon freedom of expression. For full details, contact your nearest PPG Architectural Representative, consult Sweet's catalog file, or write PPG Industries, One Gateway Center, Pittsburgh, Pa. 19522. First Savings Building, 425 California Street, San Francisco"

Architect: John Carl Warnecke and Associates, San Francisco

source: AIA Journal September 1968

The building opened in 1968. Advertising from PPG Industries (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) extolls the "glass wall" made possible through their materials. The exterior was distinctive enough to draw notice in the New York Times:

The bay window design was made possible by cantilevering each floor beyond the perimeter column line by about 19 inches at intervals of 6 feet, 4 1/2 inches, and enclosing the extended area with bronze-tinted glass on three sides. The facade line is indented between the bay windows to produce a curtain wall of unusual grace.

Each side of the building has 13 windowed sections -- six extended and seven recessed. The number of sections is half the number of stories for the building (26). A San Francisco Examiner article noted that the window treatment gave the building "a facade of visual interest and enhance the interior appeal as well" owing to the natural light. 

425 California Street (image source: 425 California [website])

The building's steel frame is encased by a grey glass exterior partitioned by opaque metal spandrels that blend with the glass in the daytime but provide contrast when the building is illuminated at night.

Pacific Telephone's Proposed Bay Area Headquarters... the 12-story structure, costing about $15 million will house more than 1,700 employes [sic]

source: San Francisco Examiner January 8, 1963

John Carl Warnecke and Associates designed an additional building at 666 Folsom Street in 1964 for the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph corporation. 

The site of the future 666 Folsom Street in 1961 (image source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection).

In the early 1960s, South of Market was on the cusp of major redevelopment. A 1961 view of the site shows parking lots and older buildings (with the original 1925 Pacific Telephone & Telegraph building in the background). 

666 Folsom, 1969-1970 (source: San Francisco Redevelopment Agency collection, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

The building was a pioneering structure in the redevelopment of San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.

666 Folsom, 1982, photograph by Sid Tate 

(source: San Francisco Examiner April 25, 1982 in the vertical file "South of Market" in the Art, Music and Recreation Center's Newspaper Clipping Files)

Similar to Warnecke's other buildings, 666 Folsom uses geometric patterns and repetition to achieve its form. Verplank describes the main facade being "divided into ten bays by thin concrete fins." These ten bays correspond to the ten upper windowed stories.  A thin molding surrounds each window, grouping four windows together within each grid section. 

666 Folsom Street - May 2008 Google Streetview

By 2004, SBC Communications (the successor at that time to Pacific Telephone & Telegraph) had closed up shop in the building. The 2008 Google Street View shows the building probably abandoned with a couple of boarded up windows.  

In a 2008 report on the structure, VerPlanck noted that Warnecke's building appeared to eligible for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources both "for its prominent and precedent-setting role in the post-war-era redevelopment of the South of Market" and "as the work of a master and as an excellent and early example of the Brutalist style in San Francisco." 

Around 2014, the exterior of Warnecke's structure was replaced and radically reimagined by the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill firm. Their architects rejected the "cumbersome, unwelcoming mass" of the original and replaced it with a glass facade. The Chronicle's architect critic John King wrote approvingly that "once homely boxes have a fresh sheen."

A later entry in the blog will look at John Carl Warnecke and Associate's designs from the 1970s and 1980s.

Bibliography: 

"About," French-American Foundation for Medical Research and Education [website].

"The Bay Window Is Going Modern," San Francisco Examiner August 20, 1967.

"Bay Windows Installed on San Francisco Tower," New York Times September 10, 1967.

CENTRAL SOMA Historic Context Statement & Historic Resource Survey (San Francisco Department of Public Works, 2015).

Historic Resource Evaluation 633 Folsom Street San Francisco, CA (Architectural Resources Group, Inc, 2014).

"Housing for Elderly," San Francisco Chronicle January 2, 1964.

King, John, "Out-dated Buildings in S.F. Swap Their Concrete Shells for Sleek Glass," San Francisco Chronicle April 23, 2014.

"Lane Bryant Will Open Store Here," San Francisco Chronicle March 20, 1955.

"New Residence," San Francisco Chronicle December 9, 1966.

"PT&T Played Big Role in Bay Area's 1962 Economy," San Francisco Examiner January 8, 1963.

"Nob Hill Elegance by Warnecke." Architectural Record April 1965. 

"Thoughtful Layouts for Efficient Nursing," Architectural Record October 1964.

VerPlanck, Christopher, Primary Record / Building, Structure, and Object Record, 666 Folsom (State of California - The Resources Agency, Department of Parks and Recreation, 2008).

Wallack, Todd, "SBC to Move Jobs Out of S.F. - Phone Giant Plans to Consolidate Its Call Centers, Offices," San Francisco Chronicle October 29, 2004.

Watson, Lloyd, "12-Story HQ for Bay Area," San Francisco Chronicle December 20, 1961.

Woodbridge, Sally Byrne, et al, San Francisco Architecture : An Illustrated Guide to the Outstanding Buildings, Public Artworks, and Parks in the Bay Area of California, rev. ed. (Ten Speed Press, 2005).

New Audio and Video Performing Arts Databases at the San Francisco Public Library

We are happy to able to expand our Streaming Music and Streaming Movies & TV offerings with some new databases from Alexander Street Press.

Qwest TV Collection features full-length clips produced for Qwest TV, a network formed by jazz legend Quincy Jones. It is an eclectic collection of video performances from many genres.

L.A. Theatre Works is a nonprofit whose work is distributed to public radio through PRX (Public Radio Exchange). Audio Drama: The L.A. Theatre Works Collections is a collection of plays that they have presented over the years. 

Broadway On Demand Collection includes hundreds of musicals, plays, and dance performances as well as documentaries, and masterclasses.

The National Theatre Collection and Royal Shakespeare Company Collection are similar databases offering performances of full-length plays by the finest British actors and actresses. These video recordings are accompanied by a transcript (the script) for convenience.

Theatre in Video is the largest of the databases and includes a mix of performances and documentaries. Much, but not all, of the programming comes from public television. To get the most out of the database use the funnel to "filter your results.

You can find these and similar databases at the following links:

https://sfpl.org/research-learn/elibrary/evideos

https://sfpl.org/emusic

https://sfpl.org/databases (search alphabetically or filter by the topic Art & Music)

from the Qwest TV Collection

John Carl Warnecke (1919-2010)

John Carl Warnecke (photo by Don Steffen in Newsweek October 2, 1967)

The Market Street Joint Venture Architects that re-envisioned and rebuilt San Francisco's Market Street in the 1960s and 1970s consisted of three firms: Mario J. Ciampi & Associates, Lawrence Halprin & Associates and John Carl Warnecke & Associates. 

John Carl Warnecke was a great power in his field. At that time he ran the largest architectural firm in the United States, headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Honolulu and Washington, DC. San Francisco Chronicle, John King architecture writer described Warnecke as a "a Bay Area architect whose mark on the American landscape can be measured from San Francisco's skyline to John F. Kennedy's grave site."

Warnecke's main claim to fame was his association with president John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie (the architect's obituaries in the Chronicle and the New York Times both headlined this). He was commissioned by the Kennedy White House to redesign Washington DC's historic Lafayette Square. Following the president's assassination he was selected to design John F. Kennedy memorial at Arlington National Cemetery with the Eternal Flame. Senator Edward Kennedy hired him to design McLean, Virginia home. Gossip writers also printed rumors that Warnecke was romantically involved with the president's widow. 

John Warnecke, tackle for the 1940 Stanford Indians (source: Merrick, Down on The Farm)

John Carl Warnecke was born on February 24, 1919 in Oakland, CA, son of architect Carl Ingomar Warnecke.  He attended Stanford University where he played tackle on the school's undefeated 1940 team that won the 1941 Rose Bowl. He remained physically imposing all his life at 6 foot 3 inches tall and 220 pounds. He quickly completed a bachelor's degree at Harvard University in 1942 where he studied with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, an innovator in the use of new materials in construction and a proponent of functionalism in design.

Warnecke began his career as an apprentice to Arthur Brown, Jr. while studying at Stanford. Brown was one of the architects for of the Civic Center's San Francisco Opera House and War Memorial Veterans Building plus the Federal Building at 50 United Nations Plaza. Warnecke later worked for his father before starting his own firm in 1950. It stayed in business until 1980.

He wrote about his work for the biographical encyclopedia Contemporary Architects:

The firm has been asked to design in places–equally beautiful–which were built by man over generations: the environs of the White House; historic Annapolis; the campuses of of the University of California and Stanford University; old Monterey; the Royal Palace grounds of Honolulu; fashionable Nob Hill; a site adjacent to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo; and the historic residential area of Neuilly in Paris. In historic places such as these, the needs of the present must show respect for the past.

Warnecke has been called a forerunner of Contextual Modernism in architecture which according to Middleton emphasizes "spatial volume" with both a regularity in pattern and a lack of ornamentation. His architecture has sometimes been called brutalist. Krantz describes Warnecke's style as "a curious blend of Beaux-Arts neoclassicism, Bauhaus Modernism and Far Eastern exoticism."

John Carl Warnecke & Associates designed hundreds of buildings of all types. The firm was hired to work on many college campuses. These included local institutions like Stanford University (notably the designing the Maples Pavilion), The University of California at Berkeley (designing Moffitt Library), UC Santa Cruz (designing the McHenry Library), The San Francisco Theological Seminary, Sonoma State University, and the College of San Mateo. The firm also worked at Georgetown University, The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, The United States Naval Academy, The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Tufts University. 

The Hart Senate Office Building (source: United States Senate)

John Carl Warnecke & Associates was also responsible for designing government buildings in Oakland, Sacramento, Washington, DC (including the Hart Senate Office Building), Minneapolis and Honolulu. Two entries from the American Architects Directory of 1962 and 1970 show some of this work and the awards that he and the firm received for it.

source: American Architects Directory, 2nd edition (1962)

source: American Architects Directory, 3rd edition (1970)

After retiring to the North Bay, John Carl Warnecke died on April 17, 2010 in Healdsburg, California.

Many of the buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke & Associates are a familiar part of the United States built landscape, but Warnecke's name has largely faded from discussion. There are not any books published about his life and career.

A subsequent blog entry will detail Warnecke's contributions to San Francisco's architecture.

Bibliography:

American Architects Directory, 2nd edition (R.R. Bowker Co., 1962).

American Architects Directory, 3rd edition (R.R. Bowker Co., 1970).

Better Market Street Project EIRAppendix 6: Cultural Resources Supporting Information (San Francisco Planning Department, 2014).

Cardinalis, Kye, "The Contextual Architectural of John Carl Warnecke," Atomic Ranch July 22, 2023.

Contemporary Architects, editor, Muriel Emanuel, 3rd ed. (St. James Press, 1994).

Grimes, William, "John Carl Warnecke, Architect to Kennedy, Dies at 91," New York Times April 23, 2010.

King, John, "John Warnecke - S.F. Architect with Close Ties to Kennedy Clan," San Francisco Chronicle May 7, 2010.

Krantz, Les., American Architects: A Survey of Award-Winning Contemporaries and Their Notable Works (Facts on File, 1989).

Merrick, Fred, Down on The Farm: A Story of Stanford Football (Strode Publishers, 1975).

Middleton, Deborah A. "Warnecke, John Carl," in The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, editor in chief, Joan Marter (Oxford University Press, 2011).

"On The Square," Newsweek October 2, 1967.

Shearer, Lloyd, "Jackie Kennedy, World's Most Eligible Widow - Will She Marry Again," Pasadena Independent Star News December 4, 1966.

"Ted Kennedy's Virginia House On Market For Nearly $10 Million," Huffington Post May 22, 2012.

 
"Warnecke, John Carl," in Current Biography (The H.W. Wilson Company, 1968).

"Warnecke, John Carl," in Current Biography (The H.W. Wilson Company, 2010).