Flood Building
The Flood Building commands the corner of Market and Powell Streets with what San Francisco Chronicle architecture critic John King described as "twelve stories of orderly pomp with a rounded prow." Completed in 1904 for James L. Flood -- son of James Clair Flood, one of the Silver Kings of the Comstock Lode -- the building is one of the few major structures in downtown San Francisco that survived the 1906 earthquake and the fires that followed. It stands next to the Powell Street cable car turntable, Hallidie Plaza, and the Powell Street BART station entrance, occupying arguably the most-crossed intersection in the city.
Silver Money, Stone Building
The Flood fortune came from Nevada silver. James Clair Flood, an Irish immigrant who had run a saloon on Washington Street, joined three partners to form the Firm of Flood and O'Brien, which struck the Comstock Lode's Big Bonanza in 1873. The profits built mansions, banks, and eventually this office building, commissioned by Flood's son James L. Flood and designed by architect Albert Pissis. Pissis gave the building a Classical Revival facade with rounded corners and an ornamented cornice, constructing it with steel framing and granite cladding robust enough to withstand the forces that would destroy most of its neighbors two years later.
Surviving 1906
The 1906 earthquake and subsequent fires leveled most of downtown San Francisco. The Flood Building survived, its steel frame and masonry walls proving more resistant to both seismic force and fire than the wooden and unreinforced brick structures that surrounded it. The building's survival was not accidental but structural -- Pissis had designed it with the kind of engineering that the city's building codes did not yet require. After the disaster, the Flood Building served as one of the anchors around which downtown San Francisco was rebuilt, a physical proof that modern construction could withstand the forces that made the city's location precarious.
Market and Powell
The Flood Building's location is as significant as its architecture. Market and Powell is the point where San Francisco's tourist corridor meets its commuter infrastructure: the cable car turntable that sends the Powell-Hyde and Powell-Mason lines toward Fisherman's Wharf sits directly outside, while the BART escalators descend to the regional rail system below. Millions of people pass the building's rounded corner every year, most without looking up. Those who do see a facade that has weathered more than a century of commerce, earthquakes, and urban change -- a building that has outlasted every department store, every transit system, and every generation of San Franciscans who have walked past it since Theodore Roosevelt was president.
From the Air
Located at 37.7849°N, 122.407°W at the corner of Market and Powell Streets in downtown San Francisco. The twelve-story building with its distinctive rounded corner is visible in the dense downtown grid near Union Square. Best viewed at 2,000-3,000 feet AGL. Nearest airports: KSFO (11 nm south), KOAK (10 nm east). Look for the Powell Street cable car turntable at the base of the building.