Features

SF Ferry Building to become public market

By Paul Glader, The Associated Press
Monday April 29, 2002

SAN FRANCISCO – Once a front door to the city by the bay, the historic “Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street” soon will have a market of its own. 

When an elegant redesign is complete in September, shoppers will find fresh produce, special spices, oils, wines and cheeses from nearly 50 vendors in a European-style food market. Restaurants and a farmer’s market will round out food offerings on the 100-year-old building’s first floor. 

“We are trying to recognize the culinary world of Northern California as a high level art form,” said Hans Baldauf, one of three architects on the three-year redevelopment project. 

The landmark was one of the world’s busiest transit terminals between the 1890s and 1930s with as many as 100,000 passengers passing through each day. 

Ferry passengers used to trudge over marble floors, past newsstands, railroad offices and out onto a busy Market Street, where they encountered trolleys, trucks and a bustle of people. 

“San Francisco never had a Union Station but it did have a Ferry Building,” said project architect Jay Turnbull. 

Project organizers hope to bring back some of the look, feel and romance of those glory days when the $85 million overhaul of the Beaux Arts structure is complete. 

“We believe it is going to be one of the most compelling spaces on the West Coast of the United States,” said project manager Chris Meany, whose firm, Wilson Meany LLC, won the 1998 redevelopment bid. 

The food market is inspired by Seattle’s Pike Place Market, Harrod’s department store in London, Peck in Milan and the food markets of France. Baldauf and Meany visited some of these markets, taking measurements and snapping photos. 

“The successful ones are totally idiosyncratic,” Meany said. “They were expressions of a place. We want this public food market to express San Francisco.” 

Cutting pieces of marble mosaic and caulking bold arched window frames, nearly 200 workers are recasting the dramatic look. They tore out most of the second floor in the three story building to recreate a grand nave. 

An overhead skylight has been uncovered and rebuilt. The incoming light accents a 12-foot marble mosaic state seal that had been covered over for years. Premium office space will fill 170,000 square feet on the second and third floors. 

Baldauf says the market is merely one element in restoring vitality to the city’s developing waterfront, which had been marred by several events in the last century. 

Ferry use dropped soon after the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges went up, though limited service still delivers 7,500 passengers each day. The Ferry Building was converted to drab office space. 

An unseemly double-decked Embarcadero Freeway running along the waterfront hid the three-story building and it’s cherished 245-foot clock tower from view — that is, until the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake brought down the freeway. 

That tragedy, some say, was a blessing for the waterfront, which has seen a renaissance with new apartments, tram lines, the Giants’ Pacific Bell park and a palm tree-lined roadway. 

Meany and his wife, Michele, hope the Ferry Building draws one million visitors in the first year. 

“San Francisco has longed for a place like this for a long time,” Michele said.