Robert W. Bowen

San Francisco Art Deco (Images of America) Robert W. Bowen

The famed period of architecture, design, and style known as Art Deco began in the mid1920s and lasted for a good 20 years. The movement left an indelible stamp all around the Bay Area but nowhere more so than in styleconscious San Francisco. The city's 1925 Diamond Jubilee, coinciding with the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in France, ushered in the Art Deco age to the city by the bay. The Roaring Twenties created a need for thousands of new commercial and residential buildings, and many of these, such as Timothy Pflueger's Pacific Telephone and Telegraph building, were Art Deco masterpieces that embodied the new "moderne" styling sweeping the country. Using a variety of building materials, including terracotta, Vitrolux, and neon, many of the city's graceful and dramatic buildings turned heads 70 years ago just as they do today.