The Hobart Building's elliptical footprint was not an aesthetic choice but an engineering response to a difficult site. The intersection of Market Street with the city's grid creates irregular lots that conventional rectangular buildings cannot efficiently fill. The architect solved the problem by curving the building's walls to follow the lot lines, producing the oval shape that gives the Hobart its distinctive silhouette. The solution turned a liability into an asset: the curved facade catches light differently than flat walls, creating shadows and highlights that change throughout the day.

The building's exterior is finished in glazed terra cotta, the ceramic material that gave early 20th-century commercial buildings their ornamental richness before the International Style stripped it away. The Hobart's terra cotta work includes classical motifs, sculptural details, and the kind of handcrafted ornamentation that modern construction cannot replicate economically. The material has weathered well, retaining its cream-colored surface through more than a century of San Francisco fog and sun.

The Hobart Building occupies one of the most complex intersections in downtown San Francisco, where Market Street's diagonal path cuts across the north-south/east-west grid. At street level, the building commands the corner with a presence that larger towers cannot match -- its curved prow faces the oncoming traffic of Market Street like the bow of a ship meeting a current. Pedestrians walking up Market from the Ferry Building have been using the Hobart as a navigational landmark for more than a century, turning at the curved facade the way sailors turn at a headland.