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The Golden Gateway: the Development of The Golden Gateway prepared for the Redevelopment Agency of the City and County of San Francisco March 1960

The Golden Gateway: the Development of The Golden Gateway prepared for the Redevelopment Agency of the City and County of San Francisco March 1960

$300.00

Kern County Land Company, Del E. Webb Construction Co.
SKU: S02231
Golden Gateway Center, 1960

Golden Gateway is the former location of San Francisco's dilapidated, congested marketplace for wholesale produce. With the assistance of the Redevelopment Agency, most of the produce firms were re-established in a modern produce terminal built for them near Islais Creek.

A competition for the redevelopment project was held in 1960. While they did not win the competition, here is the entire portfolio designed by Welton Becket & Associates:

"Ask a San Franciscan where he lives and he rarely gives a street address. He answers Presidio Heights, Russian Hill, North Beach, the Sunset, Sea Cliff, the Marina, 'South of the Slot,' Twin Peaks, St. Francis Wood. The colorful names run on and on.
"By hill, vale, view, climate or history, each of the districts of the city possesses a unique identity. They abut as the borders of provinces, each with a rich heritage of its own. To tour the city is to travel a fascinating residential land known to the world for its variety and beauty.
"We believe that many large projects are simply-projects. They are great accumulations of brick or concrete plastered to a town like neon to a cathedral. The result is grotesque and demeaning no matter how many millions are spent, despite pretense to spaciousness, no matter how many people can be sheltered there.
"We are dedicated to the principle that a redevelopment must be designed as an integrated addition to the whole city. We are opposed tot he radical surgery that grafts a project upon a city in the hope that a union will occur. 
"In 1849, five hundred ships rode at anchor hard by the cove of Yerba Buena. So myriad were the masts that they resembled a forest of leafless trees. There crews and passengers had abandoned them for the goldfields. The bottoms of theses ships now rest beneath the site of the proposed development. Their timbers have helped to fill in the cove as the waterfront has moved eastward into the Bay.
"Here is where the Gold Rush began. Here California received the gigantic impetus that carried it to statehood and fabulous wealth. And at this juncture San Francisco was transformed from trading hamlet to metropolis.
"We wish to preserve the flavor and feeling of that robust, spirited time. We propose a design soaring as a ship, clean as the wind, spacious as the Golden Gate itself. Architecture, landscaping and artistic ornamentation will reflect the essence of the great Bay and its profound effect in the formation of the city's great maritime tradition. The towers, squares and courtyards shall be known by the names of the storied ships upon which they will rest: the Niantic, the Apollo, the Georgian, the Salem.
"And we shall call this community, San Francisco's newest and proudest hallmark, the Golden Gateway.

English, 33 pages on 18 plates w/ 2 foldout drawings.