Yesterday SF Chronicle urban design writer John King proposed starting over at Hallidie Plaza, and I sent the following in response:
Dear Mr. King,
Many thanks for your thoughtful Feb. 2nd column on Hallidie Plaza. I've lived in San Francisco for 16 years, and for most of that time I've worked within a block or two of Hallidie, including three recent years at the Flood Building. Passing by and through the Plaza several times a day, I became familiar with its mix of tourists and locals, and the means by which human activity is shaped by our built environment--often for the worse.
Hallidie could and should be the city's crossroads, with so many physical vectors and social currents converging on one place. Fifth and Powell and Cyril Magnin. The cable cars and BART, the glorious F line and every sullen bus that trudges down Market. Union Square and SF Centre and Virgin and the Apple store and the Metreon and all the crowds they attract. Ladies who lunch and knick-knack vendors and sullen teen punks and mad chess geniuses and shivering Euros and big suburban families and bargain-hunters laden with bags and Filipino retirees and the steel drummer and and the tap dancer, always dancing, and the hostile shoe shine guy who takes your scuffs as a personal insult.
There's so much life, so much action and chaotic vitality. It's one of my favorite places anywhere.
But that huge, dirty, wind-swept, pigeon beshitted hole runs through its middle like a scar. It kills me. Pushing everyone away from what should rightfully be the center of activity, forcing us onto crowded narrow sidewalks along Market and in front of Forever 21. The only people who appreciate its empty space are the desperate and the drunk and the dealers, who have their own reasons for preferring privacy and darkness to mixing with the rest of us.
And yet despite that architectural tragedy, despite all the petty and not-so-petty crime that pervades the place, we refuse to let Hallidie die. On a good day, we can even make it sing.
You propose filling it in, and that might be a good start. But planners seeking to design for urban liveliness should follow Hippocrates' example: First, do no harm.
Could we guarantee that the City wouldn't make Hallidie worse if they were to undertake such a project? Of course not. Look at the awful screen that they installed to "beautify" the BART elevator a few years ago. It stands there like a rusty knife plunged into Hallidie's heart. The only useful purpose it serves is to act as a warning to anyone who'd invite the City to try to improve a social environment.
If anyone could ignite a campaign to improve Hallidie, you could. I hope you do it, and I'd gladly volunteer to help. But bear in mind that although Hallidie falls far short of perfect, those of us who love it have found a way to transcend its structural flaws and to breathe life into it. If you start the Wheels of Redevelopment turning, your first responsibility will be to make damn sure that the City doesn't come up with some godawful Master Plan that will crush all the life out of Hallidie in the process. Destroying the Plaza in order to save it, if you will. First, do no harm.
Thanks again.
Ed Batista
San Francisco
The pic above is from San Francisco CITYSCAPE, which in October 2004 discussed another Chronicle article on potential plans for Hallidie:
The Chron quotes unnamed designers on the need for "a pedestrian-friendly layout (like those) used by all celebrated plazas around the world" — so far, so good — "including perhaps a green space or park." Listen, folks: Cityscape worships nature as much as any Northern Californian, but the world's great urban open spaces are plazas, not parks. The new Union Square, up the street, was transformed from a homeless encampment into a space welcoming to all comers when its hedges were replaced by hard surfaces. Of course, nor is it empty like Hallidie's red-brick, modernist-makeover-of-Market Street kin, United Nations and Justin Herman plazas. Cityscape likes the idea a friend had, to just accept that Hallidie Plaza really should be the Times Square of San Francisco and to give over this one corner of the big city to bright lights, to "sheer whimsy, a gee-whiz display of light and sound and technology in a public plaza unlike anything available in any suburb. ... a very tall, very modern, very thin tower, clad with digital displays, jumbotrons, colored lights, strobes, and neon tubes — all sponsored by famous local Bay Area tech and Internet companies. A beacon of the future in a historic old place. A slice of Blade Runner in the cool gray city." Or, at least, we could bring the whole place out of hiding and up to street level.
Some great ideas there. No half-assed "pocket parks" at the city's crossroads, please, and no empty brick plazas either. I don't know about a tower per se, which would take the focus off the street-level action which makes Hallidie such a vital place. But I do like the idea of "sheer whimsy," of spectacle.
But could the City pull it off? As noted above, I'm not optimistic. I'd love to see Hallidie achieve its full potential, but first, do no harm.
