Market Square | |
---|---|
Former names | Western Furniture Exchange and Merchandise Mart San Francisco Mart |
Alternative names | Twitter Building |
General information | |
Architectural style | Art Deco (Additional elements of Mayan Revival and International Style) |
Address | 1355 Market Street |
Town or city | San Francisco, California |
Country | United States |
Coordinates | 37°46′35″N122°25′01″W / 37.77639°N 122.41694°W |
Year(s) built | 1936–1937 |
Opened | July 31, 1937 (Dedication ceremony) August 3, 1937 (Official opening) |
Owner | |
Landlord | Shorenstein Properties |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 11 |
Floor area | 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) |
Design and construction | |
Architecture firm | Capital Co. Architects |
Market Square (formerly the Western Furniture Exchange and Merchandise Mart, the San Francisco Mart, and, colloquially, the Twitter Building) is an Art Deco building in the Mid-Market neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States. Located at 1355 Market Street, it was constructed in 1937 and originally served as a showroom for retailers and wholesalers in the furniture industry. In the early 21st century, the building underwent an extensive conversion into office and retail space, and is most well known as the former headquarters of Twitter, Inc. and its successor X Corp. until 2024.
The building is located at 1355 Market Street, [1] [2] occupying the length of the city block between Ninth and Tenth Streets, bounded on the other side by Stevenson Street. [3] This places the building in San Francisco's Mid-Market neighborhood, [3] which is bounded by Fifth Street, Market Street, Mission Street, and Van Ness Avenue, [4] in the city's central business district. [5] Historically, this area around the site on Market Street was a theater district occupied by numerous theaters and movie palaces during the early 20th century, such as the Fox Theatre, which was situated across the street from the building. [3] [6]
The building is primarily designed in the Art Deco style, [7] [8] [9] [10] with additional elements of Mayan Revival architecture. [3] [4] A penthouse was given a later renovation in the International Style. [3] The building was designed by the architectural firm of Capital Co. Architects, though preservationists are not sure of any of the specific architects who were involved in the project. [3] In its current configuration, after several extensive renovations and expansions, it has an L-shaped layout, with frontages along Market, Ninth, and Tenth Streets. [3] Each façade has multiple sand-colored terracotta columns that are separated by friezes and accompanied by grate work over each entryway. [3] Between all 11 stories, [7] [11] it has a floor area of approximately 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2). [2] [10] It is connected to a nearby building on the same block by a skyway. [12]
The Western Furniture Exchange and Merchandise Mart, also known as the San Francisco Mart, [2] was completed in mid-1937, after about one year of construction, at a cost of about $3 million (equivalent to $61,000,000 in 2022). [3] It was designed to serve as a trade center for retailers and wholesalers in the furniture industry, and in its initial design, it featured nine floors covering over 600,000 sq ft (56,000 m2) dedicated to showrooms. [3] [10] It was built during a time when trade centers such as this were being constructed in many large cities throughout the United States, such as the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. [3] Additionally, the top floor served as the headquarters for local radio station KSAN, with a large broadcast antenna fixed atop the building. [3] On July 31, a dedication ceremony was held at the building that consisted of a luncheon attended by San Francisco Mayor Angelo Joseph Rossi, who said in a speech, "This building sprang into life in less than a year, constituting San Francisco's answer to the Depression. The new mart captures the old spirit of the West and shows that men still have the courage to dream despite obstacles that may arise". [3] Several days later, on August 3, the mart officially opened, with the keynote speaker for the event being Executive Vice President Roscoe R. Rau of the National Retail Furniture Association. [3]
Over the next several decades after its opening, the building experienced several significant renovations. [3] During World War II, an outdoor patio was reconfigured into a warehouse, with Douglas fir wood being used in place of steel and concrete due to wartime materials rationing. [3] In 1947, the building's owners purchased several adjacent parcels along Ninth Street and built an addition to the building, giving it its L-shaped layout and adding about 220,000 sq ft (20,000 m2) of showroom space. [3] In 1958, the tenth floor of the building was expanded to add more showroom space, while the building's penthouse was expanded and given a new façade. [3] In 1963, an eleventh floor was added to the penthouse. [3] Around this time, the building was purchased by the ADCO Group of New York City. [3] Between 1974 and 1975, Mart 2, a nearby building along Stevenson and Tenth Streets designed by local architect Jorge de Quesada, was constructed and connected to the main building by several skyways. [3] In 1989, the lobby and ground floor underwent a renovation. [3]
Starting in the 1980s, [4] the mart began to wane in popularity, [3] coinciding with a decline in the neighborhood, which was experiencing urban decay. [7] [8] In 1985, given the poor state of the Mid-Market, columnist Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle called the area "Le Grand Pissoir", [4] while a 2022 article in The San Francisco Standard called it "a forlorn cityscape of half-empty buildings, struggling storefronts and troubled people living on the streets". [5] From 2005 to 2008, the number of retailers who actively used the space fell from 300 to 30. [3] This decline was primarily driven by changes in wholesale buying patterns and from increased competition from other wholesaling venues. [3] During this time, a semi-annual trade show that was held at the mart relocated to the World Market Center Las Vegas, while many high-end retailers moved to other boutique venues in San Francisco. [1] Around 2006, ADCO Group considered converting some of the building's upper floors into condominiums, though they ultimately decided against these plans. [3] [9] Instead, the company decided to renovate the building for retail and office space. [3] In January 2008, the company gave notice to the remaining vendors that they would have to vacate the building by the end of the year, after which it would undergo a conversion that was estimated to take about 18 months. [9] This conversion process coincided in part with the Great Recession, [3] which left about half of Mid-Market's offices and 30 percent of the neighborhood's retail centers vacant. [5]
In 2011, the building was purchased from ADCO Group by San Francisco-based Shorenstein Properties for $110 million ($140,000,000 in 2022). [3] According to a spokesperson for Shorenstein, part of the appeal of the building was its resemblance to the Russ Building, a similar Art Deco-Mayan Revival building that served as Shorenstein's headquarters. [3] According to Kristina Shevory of The New York Times , another reason the company, which was "known for its blue-chip office towers in the Financial District", to buy the building was that it offered a significant amount of office space during a time when the available amount in San Francisco was fairly small. [11] Shorenstein continued work on the renovations, ultimately spending approximately $300 million. [3] RMW Architecture and Interiors served as the architectural firm for the project, while BCV Architects + Interiors designed many of the public and retail spaces in the building. [3] They also performed a thorough renovation on Mart 2. [3]
Around the same time that Shorenstein was purchasing the property, Twitter, Inc., the company that owned the social networking service Twitter, was in negotiations to relocate its headquarters to the building. [3] At the time, the company, which had been founded in San Francisco in 2006, [13] was based in the South of Market neighborhood, [1] which was home to several other startup companies. [6] However, the company was planning to relocate outside of the city to Brisbane, California, [4] in nearby Silicon Valley, where other technology companies such as Facebook and Google were based. [6] According to Twitter executive Colin Crowell, the company, which was planning to double their staff, did not believe that remaining in San Francisco was optimal given the city's payroll tax. [6] The company had also expressed interest in the mart as a possible new headquarters location, and city leaders such as Mayor Ed Lee brokered a deal that would give companies based in the area around the building a six-year period during which they would not have to pay any payroll tax on new jobs. [6] In addition to keeping Twitter from relocating out of the city, [6] local leaders were hopeful that the tax break deal would encourage more companies to relocate to Mid-Market, leading to an urban renewal of the area, which still had a bad reputation for crime and homelessness. [4]
In April 2011, Twitter announced they would be relocating their headquarters to the building, [11] which was now known as Market Square. [2] [14] Twitter officially completed their relocation in June 2012, [1] [4] [15] occupying the seventh, eighth, and ninth floors. [7] IA Architects and Lundberg Design collaborated on the interior design for the headquarters. [7] The lease, which would last until 2021, gave the company over 200,000 sq ft (19,000 m2) of floor space, with the option to expand if needed. [11] [note 1] Following the move, the building became locally known as the "Twitter Building", [10] while the surrounding area was nicknamed "Twitterloin", a portmanteau of Twitter and the nearby Tenderloin neighborhood. [1]
In 2015, Shorenstein began to seek offers for the property, [16] and in August of that year, they sold a 98 percent stake in the building to the asset management division of JPMorgan Chase, with a valuation of $920 million. [17] [18] At the time, in addition to Twitter, which was still the majority leaseholder, other tenants in the building included Yammer, a social networking service owned by Microsoft, and several fine dining restaurants in the building's lower levels. [19] [20] In 2017, a new skyway was added to connect Market Square to Mart 2, as the previous bridge had been removed in 2011 due to not being compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. [12]
In 2022, Twitter was purchased by business magnate Elon Musk in a $44 billion deal. [21] [22] In April of that year, prior to the acquisition, Musk had tweeted about converting Twitter's headquarters into a homeless shelter, which generated some support from fellow business magnate Jeff Bezos. [23] In December of that year, following the acquisition, the New York Post reported that Musk could relocate Twitter's headquarters from San Francisco following an incident wherein the city launched a probe into possible zoning violations performed by the company. [13] At the time, the company occupied 379,000 sq ft (35,200 m2) at Market Square, with a lease scheduled to end in 2028. [13] In November 2022, Musk fired roughly half of the company's 7,500-person workforce, [22] which was followed by a mass resignation of several hundred Twitter employees in response to Musk's leadership. [24] Around this time, on November 17, an activist projected signs onto the side of the building that were critical of Musk. [25] [26] By January 2023, Twitter's physical presence in the building had declined from six floors to just two floors. [22] [27] That same month, a lawsuit was filed in a California superior court alleging that the company had failed to pay rent for both December 2022 and January 2023 on the Market Square property. [28]
In July 2023, Musk initiated a rebrand of the website from Twitter to X, and on the morning of July 24, a large logo X was projected onto the side of the building. [29] That same month, Musk announced that the company's headquarters would remain in San Francisco, saying in a post on the website: [30]
Many have offered rich incentives for X (fka Twitter) to move its HQ out of San Francisco. Moreover, the city is in a doom spiral with one company after another left or leaving. Therefore, they expect X will move too. We will not. You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down. San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend.
In late July 2023, a large metal X sign was installed atop the building. [30] [31] [32] This sign was later dismantled and removed after the city issued a notice of violation. [33] Prior to this, the San Francisco Police Department had stopped workers from removing a Twitter sign off of the building because they had not properly secured the worksite before beginning the dismantling. [21]
Shorenstein is a real estate investment company based in San Francisco that owns interests in 23 million square feet of office space throughout the United States. The company has sponsored twelve closed-end real estate funds, with total equity commitments of $8.8 billion, including $723.5 million from the company.
Union Square is a 2.6-acre (1.1-hectare) public plaza bordered by Geary, Powell, Post, and Stockton Streets in downtown San Francisco, California. "Union Square" also refers to the central shopping, hotel, and theater district that surrounds the plaza for several blocks. The area got its name because it was once used for Thomas Starr King rallies and support for the Union Army during the American Civil War, earning its designation as a California Historical Landmark. Despite its declining profile, Union Square in San Francisco is still a major retail hub for the city.
The Financial District is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, United States, that serves as its main central business district and had 372,829 jobs according to U.S. census tracts as of 2012-2016. It is home to the city's largest concentration of corporate headquarters, law firms, insurance companies, real estate firms, savings and loan banks, and other financial institutions. Multiple Fortune 500 companies headquartered in San Francisco have their offices in the Financial District, including Wells Fargo, Salesforce, and Gap.
Mission Bay is a 303-acre (123 ha) neighborhood on the east side of San Francisco, California. It is bordered by China Basin to the north, Dogpatch to the south, and San Francisco Bay to the east. Originally an industrial district, it underwent development fueled by the construction of the UCSF Mission Bay campus, and is currently in the final stages of development and construction. It is the site of the Chase Center and Uber's headquarters.
Oakland City Center is an office, shopping and hotel complex in Downtown Oakland, Oakland, California. The complex is the product of a redevelopment project begun in the late 1950s. It covers twelve city blocks between Broadway on the east, Martin Luther King Jr. Way on the west, Frank H. Ogawa Plaza on 14th Street on the north side of the complex and the Oakland Convention Center and Marriott Hotel extend south to 10th Street. An hourly parking garage is located beneath the complex's shopping mall. The mall features an upscale fitness and racquet club, in addition to numerous take-out restaurants and other stores. The complex is served by the 12th Street/Oakland City Center BART station.
555 Mission Street is a 33-story, 147 m (482 ft)[A] office tower in the South of Market area of San Francisco, California. Construction of the tower began in 2006 and the tower was finished on September 18, 2008. It was the tallest office building constructed in San Francisco in the 2000s, and is the 25th tallest building in San Francisco.
140 New Montgomery Street is a 26-floor Art Deco mixed-use office tower located in San Francisco's South of Market district, close to the St. Regis Museum Tower and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Constructed in 1925 as a modern headquarters for The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., it was originally known as The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company Building or simply the Telephone Building, and, after 1984, as The Pacific Bell Building or The PacBell Building.
650 California Street, also known as the Hartford Building, is a 34-story, 142 m 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 not far from 555 California Street. 650 California is visible from every direction except from the southeast, where the Financial District skyscrapers block the view.
181 Fremont is an 803-foot (245 m) 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. 181 Fremont is owned and operated by Jay Paul Company, which was the sole developer of the project. The entire office portion of the building was leased to Facebook to house its San Francisco office and Instagram division.
Salesforce East is a 30-story skyscraper in the South of Market district of San Francisco, California.
123 Mission Street, sometimes referenced as the Pacific Gas & Electric Building, is a 124 m (407 ft) 29 floor skyscraper in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco, California, completed in 1986. The tower was developed by Shorenstein Properties and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
1095 Avenue of the Americas is a 630-foot-tall (190 m) skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It was constructed from 1971 to 1973 to be the headquarters of New York Telephone Company and has 41 floors. The building also served as the headquarters of NYNEX and Bell Atlantic. Kahn & Jacobs designed the tower, which is the 98th tallest building in the city. The original facade was said to be designed to resemble the relays which were commonly found inside telephones of the time.
Foundry Square is a complex of four architecturally-linked, 10-story mid-rise buildings located at Howard and First Streets near the Transbay Transit Center in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, California. Each of the four buildings stands on a different corner of the street.
Five Post Oak Park is a skyscraper in Houston, Texas. The building, with Class A office space, has the headquarters of Amegy Bank and Willbros Group.
350 North Orleans is the official name of the 24-floor multipurpose building located in the River North community area of Chicago, at the intersection of the North Branch and the Main Branch of the Chicago River. It was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In 1988, Helmut Jahn designed an enclosed pedestrian walking bridge over Orleans Street connecting the building to Merchandise Mart. Originally built to serve as the world's largest wholesale buying center for the clothing industry, the building has more commonly known by several other names including River North Point, TheApparel Mart, and the Chicago Apparel Center. The building opened on November 6, 1976.
H Mart is an American chain of Asian supermarkets operated by the Hanahreum Group, headquartered in Lyndhurst, Bergen County, New Jersey. The chain has 84 stores throughout the United States, operated variously as H Mart, H Mart Northwest, and H Mart Colorado; two stores in the Pacific Northwest operate as G Mart. It also has stores in Canada and two in the United Kingdom. H Mart is the largest U.S.-based grocery store chain that specializes in Asian-style products and caters to Asian-American shoppers.
Mid-Market is a neighborhood, historic district and development area in San Francisco, California. The neighborhood is bounded by Market Street to the north, 5th Street to the east, Mission Street to the south, and Van Ness Avenue to the west. There are many theaters in the district, most of which began as vaudeville theaters, include the Warfield and Golden Gate.
222 Second Street is a 370-foot (110 m) office skyscraper in the South of Market District of San Francisco, California. It is under lease by social networking company LinkedIn.
The Hibernia Bank, headquartered in San Francisco, California, was founded in April 1859 as the Hibernia Savings and Loan Society. In 1892, the company built a Beaux-Arts headquarters at 1 Jones Street at the corner of McAllister and Market Streets, designed by Albert Pissis. Slightly damaged in the 1906 earthquake and fire, it re-opened again just five weeks after the calamity; Pissis designed an addition to the building in 1908.
110 East is a 305-foot (93 m) tall 23 story office building in South End Charlotte, North Carolina.
Media related to Market Square complex (California) at Wikimedia Commons