View from Fort Mason - March 2018 (0167)

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 ...

, in the United States, has at least 482 high-rises, 58 of which are at least tall. The tallest building is

Salesforce Tower Salesforce Tower, formerly known as Transbay Tower, is a 61-story skyscraper at 415 Mission Street, between First and Fremont Street, in the South of Market district of downtown San Francisco. Its main tenant is Salesforce, a cloud-based softwar ...

, which rises and is the 17th-tallest building in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The city's second-tallest building is the

Transamerica Pyramid The Transamerica Pyramid is a 48-story futurist skyscraper in San Francisco, California, United States, and the second tallest building in the San Francisco skyline. Located at 600 Montgomery Street between Clay and Washington Streets in the ci ...

, which rises , and was previously the city's tallest for 45 years, from 1972 to 2017. The city's third-tallest building is

181 Fremont 181 Fremont is an mixed-use skyscraper in the South of Market District of San Francisco, California. The building, designed by Heller Manus Architects, is located adjacent to the Transbay Transit Center and 199 Fremont Street developments. 1 ...

, rising to 802 ft (244 m). San Francisco has 27 skyscrapers that rise at least 492 feet (150 m). Six more skyscrapers of over 150 m are under construction, have been approved for construction, or have been proposed. Its skyline is currently ranked second in the

Western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the Wes ...

(after

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

) and sixth in the United States, after

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

, and Los Angeles.Based on existing and under construction buildings over 150 meters tall. New York has 333 existing and under construction buildings at least ; Chicago has 140; Miami has 62; Houston has 38; Los Angeles has 36; Dallas has 21; San Francisco has 29. Source of Skyline ranking information: SkyscraperPage.com diagrams
New York CityChicagoMiamiHoustonLos AngelesDallasSan Francisco
(as of April 2021). __TOC__

History

San Francisco's first skyscraper was the Chronicle Building, which was completed in 1890. M. H. de Young, owner 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 ...

'', commissioned

Burnham and Root Burnham and Root was one of Chicago's most famous architectural companies of the nineteenth century. It was established by Daniel Hudson Burnham and John Wellborn Root. During their eighteen years of partnership, Burnham and Root designed and ...

to design a signature tower to convey the power of his newspaper. Not to be outdone, de Young's rival, industrialist

Claus Spreckels Adolph Claus J. Spreckels (July 9, 1828 – December 26, 1908) (his last name has also been misspelled as Spreckles) was a major industrialist in Hawai'i during the kingdom, republican and territorial periods of the islands' history. He also in ...

, purchased the ''

San Francisco Call ''The San Francisco Call'' was a newspaper that served San Francisco, California. Because of a succession of mergers with other newspapers, the paper variously came to be called ''The San Francisco Call & Post'', the ''San Francisco Call-Bulletin ...

'' in 1895 and commissioned a tower of his own that would dwarf the Chronicle Building. The Call Building was completed in 1898 and stood across

Market Street Market Street may refer to: *Market Street, Cambridge, England *Market Street, Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia * Market Street, George Town, Penang, Malaysia *Market Street, Manchester, England *Market Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia ...

from the Chronicle Building. The Call Building (later named the Spreckels Building, and Central Tower today) would remain the city's tallest for nearly a quarter century. Both steel-framed structures survived the 1906 earthquake, demonstrating that tall buildings could be safely constructed in earthquake country. Other early twentieth-century skyscrapers above include the Merchants Exchange Building (1903),

Humboldt Bank Building The Humboldt Bank Building is a 19-floor office building at 785 Market Street and Fourth Street in San Francisco, California. It was created by the Humboldt Savings Bank, with construction beginning in 1905. However, the 1906 San Francisco earthq ...

(1908),

Hobart Building __NOTOC__ The Hobart Building is an office high rise located at 582–592 Market Street, near Montgomery and 2nd Streets, in the financial district of San Francisco, California. It was completed in 1914. It was at the time the second tallest buil ...

(1914), and

Southern Pacific Building The Southern Pacific Building is one of three office buildings comprising One Market Plaza along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, California. The historic 11- story, building, also known as "The Landmark", was started in 1916 and completed in ...

(1916). Another skyscraper boom took hold during the 1920s, when several

Neo-Gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

and

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 ...

high rises, reaching three to four hundred feet (90 to 120 m) in height, were constructed, including the Standard Oil Building (1922), Pacific Telephone Building (1925),

Russ Building __NOTOC__ The Russ Building is a Neo-Gothic office tower located in the Financial District of San Francisco, California. It was designed by architect George W. Kelham, who was responsible for many of San Francisco's other prominent high-rise buil ...

(1927), Hunter-Dulin Building (1927), 450 Sutter Medical Building (1929), Shell Building (1929), and McAllister Tower (1930). The

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

halted any further skyscraper construction until the 1950s when the Equitable Life Building (1955) and Crown-Zellerbach Building (1959) were completed. Many of San Francisco's tallest buildings, particularly its office

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

s, were completed in a building boom from the late 1960s until the late 1980s. During the 1960s, at least 40 new skyscrapers were built, and the Hartford Building (1965), 44 Montgomery (1967), Bank of America Center (1969), and

(1972) each, in turn, took the title of

tallest building in California This list ranks skyscrapers/high rise buildings and structures in the state of California by height. Buildings and structures in six cities are included in this list; Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Burbank and Oakland each have ...

upon completion. At tall, the Transamerica Pyramid was one of the most controversial, with critics suggesting that it be torn down even before it was completed. This surge of construction was dubbed "

Manhattanization ''Manhattanization'' is a neologism coined to describe the construction of many tall or densely situated buildings, which transforms the appearance and character of a city to what is similar to Manhattan, the most densely populated borough of New ...

" by opponents and led to local legislation that set some of the strictest building height limits and regulations in the country. In 1985, San Francisco adopted the Downtown Plan, which slowed development in the

Financial District A financial district is usually a central area in a city where financial services firms such as banks, insurance companies and other related finance corporations have their head offices. In major cities, financial districts are often home to s ...

north of

and directed it to the area

South of Market 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 ...

around the

Transbay Terminal The San Francisco Transbay Terminal was a transportation complex in San Francisco, California, United States, roughly in the center of the rectangle bounded north–south by Mission Street and Howard Street, and east–west by Beale Street and 2 ...

. Over 250 historic buildings were protected from development and developers were required to set aside open space for new projects. To prevent excessive growth and smooth the boom-and-bust building cycle, the Plan included an annual limit of for new office development, although it grandfathered millions of square feet of proposals already in the development pipeline. In response, voters approved Proposition M in November 1986 that reduced the annual limit to until the grandfathered square footage was accounted for, which occurred in 1999. San Francisco downtown aerial 2015

These limits, combined with the

early 1990s recession The early 1990s recession describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the Western world in the early 1990s. The impacts of the recession contributed in part to the 1992 U.S. presidential election victory of Bill Clinton over incu ...

, led to a significant slowdown of skyscraper construction during the late 1980s and 1990s. To guide new development, the city passed several neighborhood plans, such as the Rincon Hill Plan in 2005 and Transit Center District Plan in 2012, which allow taller skyscrapers in certain specific locations in the South of Market area. Since the early 2000s, the city has been undergoing another building boom, with numerous buildings over 400 feet (122 m) proposed, approved, or under construction; some, such as the two-towered

One Rincon Hill One Rincon Hill is an upscale residential complex on the apex of Rincon Hill in San Francisco, California, United States. The complex, designed by Solomon, Cordwell, Buenz and Associates and developed by Urban West Associates, consists of two ...

and mixed-use

, have been completed. Multiple skyscrapers have been constructed near the new

Transbay Transit Center The Transbay Transit Center (officially the Salesforce Transit Center for sponsorship purposes) is a transit station in downtown San Francisco. It serves as the primary bus terminal — and potentially as a future rail terminal — for the San ...

, including

, which topped-out in 2017 at a height of . This building is the first

supertall A supertall building is an occupied "supertall" structure higher than and beneath . A form of skyscraper, it falls midway between a common minimum definition of "skyscraper" (a building taller ) and a " megatall" building (taller than ). Diff ...

skyscraper in San Francisco and among the tallest in the United States.

Tallest buildings

This list ranks San Francisco skyscrapers that stand at least tall, based on standard height measurement. This includes spires and architectural details but does not include antenna masts. The "Year" column indicates the year in which a building was completed.

Tallest under construction, approved and proposed

Under construction

This lists buildings that are under construction in San Francisco and are planned to rise at least . Under construction buildings that have already been topped out are also included.

Approved

This lists buildings that are approved for construction in San Francisco and are planned to rise at least .

Proposed

This lists buildings that are proposed in San Francisco and are planned to rise at least . * Table entries with dashes (—) indicate that information regarding building floor counts or dates of completion has not yet been released.

Timeline of tallest buildings

This lists buildings that once held the title of tallest building in San Francisco as well as the current titleholder, the

Notes

* Please note, that San Francisco with 29 high rises according to your numbers is ahead of Dallas. 29 vs 22 Please correct. Added with 10 planned high rises of 500 feet or more, it will in time surpass LA. Including one of well over 1,000 ft.

References

;General * ;Specific

External links

Diagram of San Francisco skyscrapers
on SkyscraperPage
The skyscrapers of San Francisco
Video detailing the San Francisco skyline. {{Featured list

* Tallest buildings