Architecture of San Francisco

Icons of San Francisco architecture include the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, Coit Tower, the Palace of Fine Arts, Lombard Street, Alamo Square, Fort Point, the Transamerica Pyramid, and Chinatown. Included below are summaries of the historical significance of some of these great San Franciscan architectural achievements.

Fort Point

At the foot of the Golden Gate bridge is Fort Point, built to protect the Bay from naval attacks. Designed to allow cannons to hit enemy ships at water level, Fort Point is the only one of its kind in the west. It was originally constructed under the leadership of Spanish Lieutenant Jose Joaquin Moraga. Moraga had been sent up from Monterey, about 100 miles south of San Francisco, to build fortifications in the San Francisco Bay in order to secure Spanish control over the whole area. In 1792, he built a Presidio style fort, which had sufficient fortifications, but was clearly not strong enough to truly act as the main defense of the harbor.

In 1796, Moraga redesigned the fort and gave it the name, Castillo de San Joaquín. Unfortunately, the fort was built from adobe brick and constructed on sand, meaning that the adobe cracked when one of the cannons was fired and that each winter the Fort would be heavily damaged from the weather. After the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, the Spanish were forced to abandon all of posts in California, including the Castillo. Once the fort was abandoned, the Mexican government attempted to maintain it and others of its kind, but the young government simply did not have the resources to do so. All of the forts in California were abandoned by 1835.

After California was granted statehood in 1850, the fort still sat unused until 1856, when the United States government allotted $500,000 (about $14 million in today's money) to install fortifications in California. The people in charge of the fortifications decided to rebuild The Castillo de San Joaquín, but using much more modern materials and building techniques. The fort was built on a granite foundation with masonry walls 12 feet thick. The fort was loaded with weapons and renamed Fort Point. At the time, the fort was incredibly impressive and served as the main fortification protecting the San Francisco bay. It was also the most powerful heavily fortified fort on the west coast when it was built. However, after the civil war, masonry forts of its type were rendered technologically obsolete, leaving Fort Point as simply a testament to San Francisco's pre-Civil War military might.