United States Customhouse (San Francisco)
Dig beneath 555 Battery Street and you will find timbers from the hull of the steamship Georgian, a Gold Rush-era vessel abandoned in San Francisco Bay when its crew decamped for the goldfields. The U.S. Custom House rests on this ghost ship's bones -- a fitting foundation for a building that has been processing arrivals to San Francisco since 1911, and whose predecessors burned, collapsed, and were demolished in the city's relentless cycle of destruction and renewal.
Four Custom Houses Before This One
San Francisco needed a custom house almost the moment the United States acquired its harbor. The first was established in 1850 in an adobe building on Portsmouth Square. It moved to a four-story brick structure at Montgomery and California Streets the same year, but that building burned in the Great Fire of 1851. A temporary relocation led to a more permanent structure on Battery Street in 1854, which served for six decades before being demolished in November 1905. Each iteration reflected the city's explosive growth and its equally explosive vulnerability to fire, earthquake, and the sheer pace of change. The current building was the fifth attempt to create a permanent home for the customs service.
Built Through an Earthquake
In 1905, the St. Louis architectural firm Eames & Young won a national design competition for the new custom house. Ground was broken on January 28, 1906. Three months later, the devastating earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco. Construction continued, but severe labor and material shortages -- everything was being used to rebuild the city simultaneously -- delayed completion until 1911. The six-story building is faced in pale granite from Raymond, California, and designed in the Beaux Arts Classicism style popular during the City Beautiful movement. Its U-shaped plan surrounds an oval two-story Custom Hall, whose vaulted ceiling, marble floors, and two large murals by Abraham Lincoln Cooper depicting the building of the Panama Canal and an allegory of San Francisco make it one of the most beautiful government interiors in the western United States.
Oak, Marble, and a Movie Set
The interior finishes are extraordinary: oak parquet floors in herringbone patterns, walls paneled in oak with inset green leather and decorated canvas, marble staircases, and elaborate molded plaster ceilings. The Port Director's Office on the third floor, with its oak paneling, ornamental frieze, and marble fireplace, served as a set in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. The building survived the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and underwent seismic upgrades and restoration between 1993 and 1997, including the restoration of three historic skylights in Custom Hall. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1975, it remains one of the most architecturally intact federal buildings of its era, still serving its original purpose under the current banner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
From the Air
Located at 37.797N, 122.400W at 555 Battery Street in San Francisco's Financial District. The pale granite Beaux Arts building is visible among the commercial structures. Nearest airports: KSFO (11nm south), KOAK (10nm east). Best viewed at 2,000-3,000 ft AGL.