One of those great San Francisco views

I've spent the past week in an office in San Francisco's financial district. The building, at 345 California Street, has one of the most amazing views I've ever seen. The office building is usual, with 10 floors of a luxury hotel, the San Francisco Mandarin Oriental hotel, on top of 35 floors of office space. I've been up on the top office floor, and have a very hard time pulling myself away from the windows and the view they command. See what I mean?

The Transamerica pyramid is slightly to the left of center. This is, to date, the most distinctive-looking building in the San Francisco skyline. The exterior of 345 California, while interesting, is no where near as architecturally adventuresome as the pyramid. If you go to this site, you can see a photo of the Transamerica pyramid, the two "tweezer towers" of 345 California, and the brown-colored Bank of American building sticking up through the fog. 

In my photo you can also see  Telegraph Hill topped by Coit Tower, and, to the left, some of the high-rise apartment buildings on Nob Hill. The small island just to the left of Coit Tower is Alcatraz Island. Today Alcatraz is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area administered by the National Park Service. 

Here's another shot from the same window at 345 California. The building with the stepped top and the large flat building to its left are both part of the Embarcadero Center, a 10-acre retail, office and hotel complex on the edge of the Financial District. Rockefeller Center was the model for the Embarcadero Center, and, in fact, David Rockefeller was one of the Embarcadero Center developers.

Here's the entrance to 345 California. It seems to me that this entryway has shown up in a film or two. I think some of the exterior shots in Class Action were set here.

I have a mild degree of acrophobia, so even though I knew I had a heavy glass window in front of me, it was still scary to shoot this photo looking down from the south side of the building.

But in the future, San Franciscans will be able to look down from far greater heights, once the Transbay Transit Center is built south of Market Street (and no, we don't say "So-Ma" here, despite real estate developers' love of the phrase).The proposed tower will be 1200 feet high, making it the tallest building on the West Coast,  putting it within 200 feet of the Empire State Building. So maybe someday, if the project doesn't get bogged down in the political wrangling that has delayed the reconstruction of the eastern span of theSan Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, I may be able to shoot a photo from the top of this huge tower. But for now, I remain thrilled at the view I saw from 345 California.

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