The five-acre site is bounded by Union, Sansome, and Greenwich Streets and The Embarcadero. Buildings occupy only 40 percent of the site, which is divided by Battery Street into two sections. The office buildings on the western block are composed to create a view path to Telegraph Hill just beyond Sansome Street and up the well known Filbert Street steps to the hill’s summit crowned by Coit Tower.

The corporation’s low-rise brick buildings are configured with set-backs on each floor that create open balconies on their corners. The rounded corners have a rippling effect that relates the buildings to their landscaped setting.

Grouping buildings around the edges of the block allowed space for a central plaza to facilitate circulation between the buildings.The plaza’s centerpiece is a raised landscaped section that features a variety of water elements set in sculptural masonry forms.

A hard-edged concrete coping separates this section from the paved area around it. The composition is capped by a two-ton block of carnelian granite over which water spills into a pool below.

The plaza’s paving, inlaid with red, gray, and white granite blocks and divided into 35-foot-square diamonds, defines a path through the property from The Embarcadero to Sansome Street.

The path stretches like a carpet across Battery Street where a flight of stairs descends to the eastern park. The paved path then leads to a complex of office buildings in the southeast section of the block. Near the stairway a curved path introduces the informal park that serves as a foil for the plaza.

The hard edges and planar geometry of the plaza have yielded to artificially created grassy hillocks that shelter a stream, the counterpart of the plaza’s monumental fountain. Here Halprin recalled the Sierra foothills’ mining area where Levi Strauss sold his original work pants.

The stream enters the park near its southeastern corner from water mains under The Embarcadero. The rhythm of the water’s flow changes from rapid at the waterfall near the stream’s entrance to slow as the stream pursues its serpentine course through the park.

The water disappears under the street near the park’s northeastern corner.

Granite boulders set in the stream banks punctuate the stream’s narrative. Many of them stand-in for individual sculptures.

Near the northern side of the park the stream loops around, forming a small island bridged by round cast concrete stepping stones that recall those of stone in Japanese gardens. A willow tree trails its low leafy branches over the island where a pathc of lawn invites people to sit either singly or in small groups and enjoy the intimacy of this metaphysical still point in the world moving around it.

Soon after the completion of the Levi Strauss & Company campus in 1982 it became a tourist attraction. Indeed, outsiders were not aware that the plaza was Levi’s property. Company signs were discreet, and the open spaces were scaled for public use.  That the general public was not excluded from this privately owned property is a reminder of the civic generosity of this family enterprise, which conquered the world with blue jeans

Credits:

Buildings were designed by HOK with Howard Friedman and Gensler & Assocs.

Landscaping for the 3.2-acre site was designed by Lawrence Halprin

THE HISTORIC SETTING

The outdoor theater is located at the end of a road leading from the entrance to the Grove at the intersection of 19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard. From the street level the road descends down the steep slope into the ravine. The descent proceeds through a wooded terrain dramatically different from the orderly residential streets surrounding the park.

It was the contrast between the Grove’s wild landscape and the settled area on the streets around it that inspired Rosalie Stern to take the advice of John McClaren, Superintendent of Golden Gate Park, and purchase the property in 1931 for a public park in memory of her husband, Sigmund Stern.

The ravine had been a place for recreational entertainment since the mid-19th century. George Green arrived in San Francisco from Maine in 1847. Joined by family members, he subsequently purchased the land bounded by 19th avenue and Sloat Boulevard that stretched down to the beach. On the slopes of a sixty-four-acre ravine Green planted hundreds of eucalyptus trees. He and his son created a resort area with such popular features as a trout farm and boating pavilion.  In 1892, the Trocadero Inn was built on the north side of the ravine where it still stands and can be reserved for social occasions.

The Trocadero’s late 19th century cottage style with gingerbread and a generous veranda, shown below, recalls its hey-day as a party place. In front of it is a grassy picnic ground, and further along the ravine floor is the theater.

Following her purchase of the property, Rosalie Stern began a decades-long commitment to developing the park property to provide recreation and free concerts for San Franciscans.

A view of the meadow with the new theater structure and its metal canopy on the left.

EARLY CONCERT AND THEATER HISTORY

Finding the site’s natural acoustics to be excellent, Stern and her staff planned the first summer concert for June 19, 1932. One of the park designers, the architect Bernard Maybeck, designed a temporary fabric canopy suspended above a raised stage at the base of the southern slope. The meadow was lined with portable chairs.

Preparation for concerts was difficult and expensive. Portable seats needed to be placed, exit aisles had to be roped off, and temporary barrier-free access created. The rudimentary stage required time-consuming readjustment of each performer’s equipment and the cumbersome installation of a canopy to protect the musician’s instruments from the sun. The limited number of seats meant that many spectators sought precarious perches on the steep slopes, causing soil erosion and damage to the trees.

Yet, except for the creation of paths around the site and low stone walls built by employees of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) the meadow’s character remained unchanged until the 1950s when the city built a modest backstage.

Lawrence Halprin first visited the Grove in the 1950s when he came to watch his wife, Anna, dance.  “Even then,” he recalled, “it was kind of a mess, with a terrible set-up for the back-stage. And the people sitting on the slope would slide down to the bottom.”

A view showing the new terraced seating of stone opposite the stage.

OUTSIDE THE MUSEUM

The building’s long gently mounded form recalls the park’s original topography of sand dunes. The dunes are long gone and, given the park’s lush vegetation, it is even hard to imagine them. Still, it is sand, not dirt, that exists beneath the park’s man-made surface; tons of it were hauled away during excavation for the new building.

At the museum’s southwest end the downward sloping roof ends in a cantilever that overhangs the terrace outside the cafe. The terrace merges with the Barbro Osher Sculpture Garden, which shades into the Japanese Tea Garden beyond. A tower at the northeast corner commemorates the one that rose above the former building. The two structures link the museum to its narrow site between the Music Concourse and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Drive to the larger park.

The architects’ desire to have the building blend into the park led to their wrapping it in a skin of textured copper based on photos of the park’s tree canopies. The photos were converted into abstract patterns embossed in the form of “dimples and pimples” with different degrees of depth, which were stamped on the copper panels that camouflage the structure.

The perforated panels, used where the intake or exhaust of air was needed, have punched holes of different sizes that follow orthogonal patterns.

This effect was not achieved effortlessly because the building’s surface requirements and its geometry varied with the panels’ location. A special team assumed the task of attaching the 7,200 panels–no two alike–to the structure. Although the perforated skin does not give the building a gauzy transparency, sunlight creates a continuous rippling effect over the walls that conveys movement.

At this writing the copper skin has darkened to an unappealing cinnamon color that makes the building go dead on foggy days and has prompted comparison to a rusted aircraft carrier. But when oxidation has turned the copper green the building will merge more harmoniously with its leafy surroundings. The designers saw the gradual greening as a natural cycle in keeping with that of the park. Yet, even they may not have realized that, in the opinion of some metallurgists, San Francisco ’s mild climate may cause this process, if unaided, to take a half century or so to occur.

The landscaping that Walter Hood designed for the museum’s front yard addresses subtle issues of maintenance and use. The palms, some of which already existed, provide tree presence without requiring trimming to prevent hiding the building. From the drive between the Music Concourse and the museum’s facade the viewer sees the palm trees rising from an unbroken carpet of grass. But as the entry path is approached, a series of narrow stone paths appears to connect the areas on either side of the walkway. Benches are set intermittently on the paths.