Hallidie Building

Architecture
Financial District
Heritage Buildings

Emilie

Published on 12/03/2025

This point of interest is available as audio on the tour: Visit San Francisco, From skycrapers to fortune cookies

Yes, we’re in the Financial District, so of course what we’re primarily admiring here are historical buildings! Let me introduce you to you the rather incredible looking Hallidie Building. Well, you have to like picture windows and gilding, but it sure has style. We owe this building to Willis Polk, a controversial figure in local urban architecture, who also gave San Francisco the Hobart Building, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the Pacific Union Club. This building, Hallidie, was one of the first in the United States to use glass curtain walls, a technique consisting of fixing the glass outside the building’s structure, creating kind of a transparent skin. The building was originally intended to serve as a boardroom for the University of California, hence the blue and yellow color coding. The building was named in honor of Andrew Hallidie, a board member and, by the way, the inventor of the cable car.