140 New Montgomery Street, originally known as The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company Building, and, after 1984, as The Pacific Bell Building or The PacBell Building, in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
's
South of Market district, is an
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
mixed-use
Mixed-use is a kind of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning type that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions are to som ...
office tower located close to the
St. Regis Museum Tower and the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...
.
The 26-
floor building was designed to consolidate numerous smaller buildings and outdated offices into a modern headquarters for
The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., and as a result, was designated as the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. Coast Division Offices by the company, though referred to colloquially as ''The Telephone Building''.
When it opened on May 30, 1925, The Pacific Telephone Building was San Francisco's first significant
skyscraper development, and was the tallest building in San Francisco, until the
Russ Building matched its height in 1927 at the time of its completion.
The building was the first high-rise south of Market Street, and along with the Russ Building, remained the city's tallest until it was overtaken by
650 California Street
650 California Street, also known as the Hartford Building, is a 34-story, 142 m (466 feet) office tower on the northwestern edge of San Francisco's Financial District. The tower is located on California Street on the edge of Chinatown, and no ...
in 1964. It was the first high rise located on the
west coast to be occupied solely by a single tenant.
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
sold the building in 2007, and as of 2013,
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
company
Yelp
Yelp Inc. is an American company that develops the Yelp.com website and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. It also operates Yelp Guest Manager, a table reservation service. It is headquartered in San F ...
is the main tenant.
Construction and original tenant
At the time of its construction, it housed The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., a member of the
Bell System. The building once had a bell motif in many places on its
façade
A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loan word from the French (), which means ' frontage' or ' face'.
In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important aspect ...
, most notably surrounding the arch over the main entrance doors on
New Montgomery Street. After the
breakup of the Bell System (AT&T) in 1984, and the formation the
Regional Bell Operating Companies
The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC) are the result of '' United States v. AT&T'', the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company (later known as AT&T Corp.). On January 8, 1 ...
, also known as the Baby Bells, Pacific Telephone changed its name to
Pacific Bell
The Pacific Bell Telephone Company (Pacific Bell or Pac Bell) is a telephone company that provides telephone service in California. The company is owned by AT&T through AT&T Teleholdings, and, though separate, is now marketed as “AT&T”. The ...
.
Statues of eight eagles (each in height) perch atop the tower's crown.
The building has an ''L''—shaped floor plan, and the architecture decoratively incorporates spotlights to show the exterior's terra cotta ornamentation day and night.
In 1929, Sir
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
visited the building and made his first
transatlantic telephone call, phoning his
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
home.
For 44 years until 1978, the top of the roof was used to convey official storm warnings to sailors at the direction of the United States
National Weather Service
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the ...
, in the form of a long triangular red flag by day, and a red light at night.
In the 21st century
In 2007, the PacBell Building was sold by AT&T to
Stockbridge Capital Group
Stockbridge Capital Group is a private-equity real estate investment company based in San Francisco, led by Terry Fancher and Sol Raso. In 2020 the company had over $16 billion in assets under management.
The company owns the Hollywood Park Ca ...
and Wilson Meany Sullivan for .
In 2008, the new owners filed plans to convert the tower into 118 luxury condominiums. However, those plans were put on hold during the
2008 financial crisis, and the building sat empty for nearly six years.
Following a surge in office demand in 2010–2011, Wilson Meany Sullivan changed the plans back to office space.
Major renovation work began in February 2012, to improve the building's seismic performance, install all–new mechanical, electric, plumbing and fire sprinkler systems, and preserve and restore the building's historic lobby, at an estimated cost of .
In 2012, Yelp announced it had signed a lease on the building's of office space through 2020. After two expansions, the company held a total of almost on 13 floors in the fall 2015.
In April 2016, Pembroke Real Estate Inc., a
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
–based
REIT
A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of commercial real estate, including office and apartment buildings, warehouses, hospitals, shopping ce ...
, acquired 140 New Montgomery as part of its portfolio — its second acquisition in San Francisco.
According to property records, Pembroke paid for the property, at around per square foot.
See also
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South of Market, San Francisco
South of Market (SoMa) is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, situated just south of Market Street. It contains several sub-neighborhoods including South Beach, Yerba Buena, and Rincon Hill.
SoMa is home to many of the city's museums ...
(SOMA)
*
Eliel Saarinen's Tribune Tower design
Eliel Saarinen's Tribune Tower design or the Saarinen tower are terms used to describe the unnamed and unbuilt design for a modernist skyscraper, created by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen and submitted in 1922 for the ''Chicago Tribune''s arch ...
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Russ Building
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List of tallest buildings in San Francisco
San Francisco, California, in the United States, has at least 482 high-rises, 58 of which are at least tall. The tallest building is Salesforce Tower, which rises and is the 17th-tallest building in the United States. The city's second- ...
External links
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140 New Montgomery Streetat the
Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) is an international body in the field of tall buildings and sustainable urban design. A non-profit organization based at the Monroe Building in the city of Chicago, Illinois, United States ...
's ''The Skyscraper Center''
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''Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. Building''by
James R. Miller, 1924, architectural drawing, charcoal and graphite on paper, at the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...
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Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company Building photographsfor multiple San Francisco locations at the
San Francisco Public Library
The San Francisco Public Library is the public library system of the city and county of San Francisco. The Main Library is located at Civic Center, at 100 Larkin Street. The library system has won several awards, such as '' Library Journals ...
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References
{{Buildings in San Francisco
Buildings and structures completed in 1925
Art Deco architecture in California
Historic American Buildings Survey in California
Skyscraper office buildings in San Francisco
South of Market, San Francisco