Grand Central Spaces

Imagine it: The Ferry Building as an amazing intermodal transit hub, with ferries pulling up to wide, mobile ramps that take disembarking passengers into a beautiful naturally lit concourse. A wide pedestrian bridge connects directly to Market Street,

San Francisco’s waterfront is now perfectly positioned to accommodate, or expand on recreational, entertainment and social activities.

By Andrew Wolfram
Published: April, 2006

Imagine it: The Ferry Building as an amazing intermodal transit hub, with ferries pulling up to wide, mobile ramps that take disembarking passengers into a beautiful naturally lit concourse. A wide pedestrian bridge connects directly to Market Street, as well as the central hub and connection point for an extensive light rail system that transports passengers to every corner of the City. Imagine the Embarcadero roadway running through a tunnel beneath the Ferry Plaza, keeping car traffic moving and out of the way of pedestrians, and the City’s largest public food market bordering all of it, with its scents, sites, sounds and bustling activity.

A vision for the future? Actually, it’s San Francisco’s past - circa 1930 - when the Ferry Building was the central connection point in an incredibly convenient, seamless and efficient transit network—the crossroads for the City and the Bay Area.

By the late 1950’s, after the opening of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, much of the Bay Area’s mass transit infrastructure was dismantled in favor of the automobile. With the Ferry Building’s original use no longer central to its existence, its grand spaces were chopped into small offices and its eastern façade completely buried in concrete. A double-decker freeway wrapped the City’s waterfront, further isolating and disconnecting the Ferry Building from city life. Dramatic physical, social and economic changes along the waterfront in the last three decades have given San Franciscans the opportunity to re-think its place in the City, including the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake critically damaging the Embarcadero freeway. Thankfully, San Franciscan’s wisely voted not to rebuild it. Social and economic changes related to the way shipping is handled have meant that most of the historic maritime industries are no longer viable.

So, what does the future hold for San Francisco’s waterfront, and what role does the Ferry Building play in its transformation from an industrial port into a recreationally focused district?

With its adjacencies to multiple neighborhoods, San Francisco’s waterfront is now perfectly positioned to accommodate, or expand on recreational, entertainment and social activities. To succeed as a vibrant active place, this linear neighborhood that wraps the Financial District needs hubs that draw people to the widest variety of activities. Some of these hubs are purely recreational, like bike riding along the Embarcadero, or seasonal, like the ballpark.

The Ferry Building works as a hub for multiple reasons. At one of the City’s most highly visible locations, at the axis of Market Street and the Embarcadero, the Ferry Building is visible from the water, the Bay Bridge, all along Market Street and from the hills to the north, south and west. The recent renovation of the building has built on the dramatic character of its historic features, but also altered the building’s circulation patterns, integrating the building more effectively with the streets and water surrounding it. Historically, the ground floor was devoted to service and baggage handling, and offered no views of the grand space above. Now the ground floor nave, parallel to the water and to the street, acts like an interior street, crossed in numerous paces with passageways that provide spectacular views of the water and access to waterfront promenades. People come to experience this beautiful, naturally lit interior street, flooded with light through a 660 foot-long skylight, a gathering space in a city with few grand spaces.

Although popular with tourists, locals in particular are drawn by the Ferry Building’s restaurants and stores and by the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market. They come to experience the authentic and local character of the building’s stores, so unlike the typical slick and packaged offerings in most retail settings.

By its very liveliness, the building draws people to it. Its redevelopment has spurred adjacent development of Piers 1 ½ through 5, currently nearing completion. The next test is whether this revitalization can spread south along the waterfront as the many tall towers in Rincon Hill increase the population of that area. Maybe then the restaurants slated for the park across from the Gap headquarters will finally be built.

The success of the Ferry Building is due to its central position, its location parallel to the water, which also maximizes street frontage and the high quality of the renovation. Adjacent developments along the water will need to imitate this quality in order to compete, which will have a long lasting benefit for waterfront’s future.