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National Register of Historic Places, San Francisco Landmark
Commission 1916(c), completion September 1918(e).
Willis Polk, architect
Retail at ground floor with offices above.
The glass wall above the ground floor is largely unaltered; the ground level has been extensively remodeled. At the office spaces on some floors partitions have been added inward from the glass.
The Hallidie, a steel-frame and masonry loft structure with an iron and glass street facade suspended beyond the supporting pillars, is the first known glass-fronted building. The refined glass wall Willis Polk developed here advanced commercial design to a remarkable degree and clearly set a precedent for the mass-produced, curtain-walled office and residential towers of the 50s and 60s. Sigfried Gideon, in Space, Time and Architecture, makes reference to this building (along with the Bauhaus in Dessau) as demonstrating an intermediate step between the glass exhibition buildings of the late nineteenth century and modern curtain-walled structures.
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