The Flood Building is a 12-story highrise located at 870 Market Street on the corner of Powell Street in the downtown shopping district of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, 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 List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

completed in 1904 and designed by

Albert Pissis Albert Pissis (1852–1914) was a prolific Mexican-American architect in San Francisco who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France and is credited with introducing the Beaux-Arts architectural style to San Francisco, California, des ...

. Situated on Powell and Market streets, next to the Powell Street cable car turntable, Hallidie Plaza and the Powell Street BART Station entrance, it is one of the few structures that survived the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

. The site formerly housed Baldwin's Hotel and Theatre, which was destroyed by fire in 1898. It was later purchased by James L. Flood, who constructed the building as a tribute to his father,

James Clair Flood James Clair Flood (October 25, 1826 – February 21, 1889) was an American businessman who made a fortune thanks to the Comstock Lode in Nevada. His mining operations are recounted to this day as an outstanding example of what may be done with a ...

(1826–1889, the

Comstock Lode The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada (then western Utah Territory), which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United ...

millionaire). In 2003, it was still owned by the Flood family. John King, the architecture critic of the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

'', praised the Flood Building as "twelve stories of orderly pomp with a rounded

prow The bow () is the forward part of the hull of a ship or boat, the point that is usually most forward when the vessel is underway. The aft end of the boat is the stern. Prow may be used as a synonym for bow or it may mean the forward-most part ...

that commands the corner of Powell and Market Streets ... Every detail is rooted and right, from the tall storefronts that beckon cable car daytrippers to the baroque cliff of the sandstone façade with its deep-chiseled windows and just enough ornamentation to enliven the mass rather than clutter the scene."

Major tenants

The

Southern Pacific Railroad The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the ...

company maintained its headquarters in the building after its earthquake renovations from 1907 until 1917 when it moved to its own building now at

One Market Plaza One Market Plaza is a complex of three office buildings at 1 Market Street along the San Francisco Embarcadero. The historic 11-story Southern Pacific Building, also known as "The Landmark", was completed in 1916, and incorporated into the d ...

. The

F. W. Woolworth Company The F. W. Woolworth Company (often referred to as Woolworth's or simply Woolworth) was a retail company and one of the pioneers of the five-and-dime store. It was among the most successful American and international five-and-dime businesses, se ...

store located on basement level and first and second floors was the largest in the chain until 1992, when it was downsized, and later closed in 1996. More recent major tenants include the flagship stores for retailers Gap,

Urban Outfitters Urban Outfitters, Inc. (URBN) is a multinational lifestyle retail corporation headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Operating in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, select Western European countries, Poland the United Arab Emirates, Kuw ...

, and

Anthropologie Anthropologie is an American clothing retailer with approximately 200 stores across the U.S., Canada, and the UK that offers an assortment of clothing, jewelry, home furniture, decoration, beauty products, and gifts. Anthropologie is part of ...

. The

Pinkerton Detective Agency Pinkerton is a private security guard and detective agency established around 1850 in the United States by Scottish-born cooper Allan Pinkerton and Chicago attorney Edward Rucker as the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton ...

had an office in Room 314 of the building, and employed

Dashiell Hammett Samuel Dashiell Hammett (; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade ('' ...

, an author of hard-boiled detective novels, as an operative.

References

External links

*{{Commons category-inline, James Flood Building
Official Flood Building website
1900s architecture in the United States Beaux-Arts architecture in California Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz buildings Market Street (San Francisco) Skyscraper office buildings in San Francisco Office buildings completed in 1904 San Francisco Designated Landmarks Union Square, San Francisco

Major tenants

See also

References

External links