505 Montgomery Street is a 24-
storey,
class-A office building in the
financial district of San Francisco,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
. The spire
perched atop the building is thought to be a replica of the
Empire State Building, but that association is mainly due to the publicity stunt during the opening of the building, which involved an inflatable gorilla perched on the spire.
History
505 Montgomery was developed by the Empire Group of San Francisco. Empire assembled ten contiguous parcels in 1978,
and filed their initial design study on 7 January 1983 with the San Francisco Department of City Planning. The initial design called for a 28-story building, high including a mechanical penthouse and ground-floor commercial space. The design was revised to a 24-story building based on floor area ratio calculations, and the final conditional use authorization was granted in June 1984.
During construction,
Mitsui Fudosan
is a major real estate developer in Japan. Mitsui Fudosan is one of the core companies of Mitsui Group.
Corporate structure
The company is organized into four divisions.
*Office Building Division
*Real Estate Solution Services Division
*Accommo ...
acquired a controlling interest in the unfinished building from The Empire Group and development was completed under the management of
AMB.
Retrofitting projects, including a 1994 lighting retrofit, earned the building an Energy Star label.
National Office Partners (NOP), a partnership between
Hines Interests LP and
CalPERS
The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is an agency in the California executive branch that "manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.5 million California public employees, retirees, and their families".CalPERSFa ...
, acquired 505 Montgomery from Mitsui Fudosan and The Empire Group in 1999. The building was subsequently sold by NOP to
RREEF
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock ...
in 2005.
Design
505 Montgomery was designed by
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in homage to the
Art Deco skyscrapers
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of what ...
of the 1930s. It features a stepped-back trapezoidal (
mansard
A mansard or mansard roof (also called a French roof or curb roof) is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope, punctured by dormer windows, at a steeper angle than the upper. The ...
) roof and the exterior is clad in polished
Barre Gray granite.
Empire Park
Empire Park is located at 642 Commercial Street, and was provided by the developers of 505 Montgomery as a
privately owned public space
Privately owned public space (POPS), or alternatively, privately owned public open spaces (POPOS), are terms used to describe a type of public space that, although privately owned, is legally required to be open to the public under a city's zoni ...
.
The initial building design included a pedestrian arcade at the site of 505 Montgomery connecting Sacramento and Commercial streets. However, the arcade would have been rather small, expensive, shaded, and the commercial atmosphere was thought to be unwelcoming for the neighboring community of Chinatown. Therefore, the public open space was moved to a nearby property, which also freed up additional leaseable floor space in 505 Montgomery.
The park originally was named Grabhorn Park, for the Grabhorn Press, the fine printer located on the site from the early 1930s to the early 1940s.
In 2016, a plaque was laid in the "floor" of Empire Park claiming that the park is on the former site of the Eureka Lodgings, where
Emperor Norton is documented to have lived from sometime in 1864 or 1865 until his death in January 1880. But, recent research shows that this claim is inaccurate; the Eureka was on a site adjacent to the park that now is occupied by a 4-story apartment building at 650/652 Commercial.
[John Lumea]
"Emperor Norton’s Residence, the Eureka Lodgings, Was Not Located (Exactly) Where You Think It Was"
The Emperor Norton Trust, 26 September 2022.
References
{{Buildings in San Francisco, state=collapsed
Financial District, San Francisco
Skyscraper office buildings in San Francisco
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill buildings
Office buildings completed in 1988