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Levi’s Plaza
Fountain, 2015
Courtesy of Alison Moore |
In
1973 Levi Strauss & Co. left its cozy quarters at 98 Battery Street in San
Francisco for the bold, upright world of the new Embarcadero Center, a series
of four skyscrapers located near the city’s waterfront. Within a few years,
however, Chairman
of the Executive Committee Walter
Haas, Jr. began to feel that all was not right. “The highrise at Embarcadero
Center was not our style,” he recounted in an oral history, “I’d get in the
elevator and people didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them.”
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Embarcadero Center,
2015
Courtesy of Alison Moore
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While
on a camping trip to the mountains with friend and San Francisco developer
Gerson Bakar, Haas expressed his dissatisfaction with the Embarcadero site.
Bakar suggested that together, they develop a piece of property at the base of
Telegraph Hill, just below the landmark Coit Tower. “Of course I jumped at the
opportunity,” Haas recalled, especially as plans developed for a five-acre
campus whose tallest building would not exceed seven stories.
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White Angel Jungle,
San Francisco, Now the Site of Levi’s Plaza, 1933
San Francisco Maritime Museum
|
To
create the corporate campus buildings, developers hired the local architecture
firm Gensler and Associates & the internationally renowned firm, HOK.
Inspiration for the buildings’ design came from the old brick warehouses
surrounding the site, including the original warehouse for the historic Italian
Swiss Colony winery (now Il Fornaio restaurant).
The
task of creating a completely new environment around the buildings fell to
noted local landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. A native of New York, Halprin
and his wife, the dancer Anna Halprin, settled in the Bay Area just after WWII,
eager to make the most of the varied landscapes of northern California and the
opportunities for artistic freedom. Inspired by his wife’s modern dance and his
time spent on an Israeli kibbutz, Halprin sought to create spaces which
encouraged social interaction in a multitude of ways.
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Lawrence Halprin
(1916–2009)
Courtesy of Anna Halprin
|
In 1960 Halprin
was part of the design team for the University of California’s Sproul Plaza—which
would later inspire social interaction writ large during the 1964 Free Speech
Movement—and designed other landmark spaces, such as the Sea Ranch, San
Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, and Portland, Oregon’s Open Space Sequence of
parks.
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Sproul Plaza,
University of California, Berkeley, 2015
Courtesy of Alison Moore
|
Halprin took
inspiration in his designs from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, especially
Yosemite National Park, and included blocks of stone and boulders, along with
water elements—streams and falls—in nearly all of his urban designs.
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Lawrence Halprin, Yosemite
Studies, 1970
Courtesy of the Halprin Family Archive and Edward Cella Art +
Architecture
|
At Levi’s
Plaza, Halprin created two parks, one on either side of Battery St., to
represent, he said, Levi Strauss’ time spent selling goods in the Sierra (a
common myth since debunked) and the creation of Levi’s dry-goods business in
Gold Rush San Francisco. The
so-called “Soft Park,” which sits next to the Embarcadero, is comprised of
lawns, streams and falls. The “Hard Park,” adjacent to the main headquarters, is
a hard-surface plaza highlighted by a dramatic waterfall descending from a
large boulder, surrounded by smaller falls and pools.
In
the “Soft Park,” the site of summertime concerts, employees and the public can
stroll the meandering grounds (there are no straight lines from one point to
another) or sit on benches, lawns or the concrete wall along Battery St. from
which, Halprin noted in a video interview, visitors can embrace the park as
fully or peripherally as they choose.
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Soft Park Creek,
Levi’s Plaza, 2015
Courtesy of Alison Moore
|
The
“Hard Park” is often the site of employee events and a popular spot for lunch
and coffee breaks, with seating around its perimeter or on the concrete edges of the cascades and pools.
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Levi’s Plaza Fountain with Levi
Strauss & Co. Headquarters in the Background, 2015
Courtesy
of Alison Moore
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At
Levi’s Plaza, the site of the Halprin’s own office for many years, Lawrence
Halprin achieved his goal of two parks, different in style but both engaging
the public as community. Walter Haas, Jr. was also pleased with the results.
When told by his oral history interviewer, “They succeeded very nicely in
bringing the Sierra to you,” he replied, “Isn’t that nice? The concept of that
is wonderful.”
Alison Moore
Strategic
Projects Liaison
Sources
- Interview with Walter A. Haas, Jr., 1988; Levi Strauss & Co. Archives
- TheCultural Landscape Foundation
- Levi Strauss & Co. Archives. For historical information about Levi’s, see: http://www.levistrauss.com/our-story/#historical-resources
You
can learn more about Anna and Lawrence Halprin at the California Historical Society’s
exhibition Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971 and
its related programs, January 21– May 1, 2016;
experiments.californiahistoricalsociety.org
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