Rincon Center is a complex of shops, restaurants, offices, and apartments in the South of Market neighborhood of Downtown San Francisco, California. It includes two buildings, one of which is the former Rincon Annex post office building, completed in 1940. Rincon Center occupies an entire city block near the Embarcadero, bounded by Mission,

Howard Howard is an English-language given name originating from Old French Huard (or Houard) from a Germanic source similar to Old High German ''*Hugihard'' "heart-brave", or ''*Hoh-ward'', literally "high defender; chief guardian". It is also probabl ...

, Spear, and Steuart Streets.

Rincon Annex

Southern Pacific (SP) originally purchased the land where the original Rincon Annex was completed, next to its headquarters for the extension of its rail line to downtown San Francisco, but the western terminus of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge interfered with the proposed site and the increasing popularity of the automobile also reduced demand for SP's Peninsula Commute service. The original Rincon Annex was designed by

Gilbert Stanley Underwood Gilbert Stanley Underwood (1890–1960) was an American architect best known for his National Park lodges. Born in 1890, Underwood received his B.A. from Yale in 1920 and a M.A. from Harvard in 1923. After opening an office in Los Angeles that ...

in the

Streamline Moderne Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In industrial design ...

style. Groundbreaking on the site occurred on June 1, 1939, the building was completed by October 15, 1940, and the facility opened on October 26. The exterior is decorated with stone relief friezes of dolphins above the doorways and windows. The original Rincon Annex building has a footprint of , with three floors and a half basement. The first floor interior has ceilings that are high; the large L-shaped lobby is long (for the portion parallel to Mission) and long (parallel to Spear). The third floor was used for employee lounge areas, dressing rooms, and offices. At its peak, there were 1,000 to 1,500 Postal Service employees working simultaneously in the building; air conditioning was installed in 1958 to reduce interior temperatures. The first expansion of Rincon Annex occurred between 1959 and 1960 on the southeast side of the block to handle mail intake and distribution; automated mail sorting machinery was installed in 1963, 1966, and 1966–78. The United States Postal Service (USPS) was spun off as a government corporation in 1972 and because it was less efficient to sort mail in a multilevel facility, the USPS began negotiations to move the mail sorting facility from Rincon Annex to India Basin Park in 1976; the move was completed by 1979. The Rincon Annex building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places the same year.

Murals

The interior of the lobby (parallel to the Mission and Spear street facades) features the ''History of San Francisco'' mural series, comprising 27 tempera-on-gesso murals painted by the Russian immigrant artist Anton Refregier from 1941 to 1948 under the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the United States Department of the Treasury. The murals, in the social realism style, depict the history of California and San Francisco's role in it. As they were completed immediately following World War II, they generated fierce controversies. Refregier's detractors criticized his artistic style and questioned his political leanings. The controversy eventually reached the U.S. Congress, where critics called for the murals to be destroyed. The murals led to the preservation of the post office lobby as part of the Rincon Center development.

1980s expansion

In 1978, the United States Postal Service announced it would move the mail sorting facilities from Rincon Annex to a larger building at

India Basin India Basin is neighborhood in the southeastern part of San Francisco, California, considered to be part of the larger Bayview–Hunters Point neighborhood. History The history of India Basin is a curious combination of industry and open space, b ...

, and the Rincon Annex Post Office was shut down by 1979. The

San Francisco Board of Supervisors The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is the legislative body within the government of the City and County of San Francisco. Government and politics The City and County of San Francisco is a consolidated city-county, being simultaneously a c ...

subsequently adopted the ''Rincon Point – South Beach Project Area Redevelopment Plan'' on January 5, 1981, which provided controls for land use, development standards, and urban design guidelines for the area including Rincon Annex. Specific Rincon Annex controls were adopted on October 18, 1983, and the USPS entered a 65-year lease with Rincon Center Associates, a partnership headed by Perini Land & Development Company, to develop the former Rincon Annex. The original building and site was developed into a mixed-use center by Rincon Center Associates; the design was approved on August 20, 1985. The lead designer was Scott Johnson of Pereira Associates, the firm founded by William Pereira, designer of the Transamerica Pyramid. The complex was completed in 1988. Rincon Center (aerial, 2010)

Two new stories of offices were added to top of the original Rincon Annex building, which was also opened up to create a five-story atrium in the rear courtyard, topped by a long skylight with a

food court A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food vendors and provides a common area for self-serve dinner. I ...

on the lower level. A new mixed-use building on the southeast side of the block contains a new post office, offices, and 320 apartments in twin 23-story towers rising from the commercial levels. The base or commercial podium of the new building is six stories tall. The residences were completed in 1989, originally intended as

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex ...

s. After the completion of Rincon Center, the parcel was divided into four lots: the original Rincon Annex, the commercial "podium" of the new building, the new postal facility, and the residential towers of the new building. The USPS transferred its ownership of three of the four lots to BRE/Rincon Land LLC in 1999, retaining ownership of the new postal facility only. The buildings were subsequently sold to Beacon Capital Partners in July 2006 for $275 million, and the apartments were sold to Capital Properties in June 2007 for $143 million. Beacon had been planning to convert the apartments to condominiums prior to the sale. Capital Properties took a two-year, $110 million loan from Bear Stearns to fund its purchase; in the wake of that bank's collapse during the Great Recession, the debt was acquired by

Carmel Partners Carmel may refer to: * Carmel (biblical settlement), an ancient Israelite town in Judea * Mount Carmel, a coastal mountain range in Israel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea * Carmelites, a Roman Catholic mendicant religious order Carmel may als ...

, which foreclosed on Capital Properties and took over the residences. In 2010, Capital Properties filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to have the property returned. Beacon Capital sold its remaining interest in Rincon Center to Hudson Pacific in April 2011. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco City Guides led walking tours of the Rincon Annex murals. Because of the pandemic, retail space in the atrium became significantly less viable, and the historic nature of the original Rincon Annex lobby meant the atrium could not be opened to the street to facilitate customer traffic. San Francisco approved an amendment to the redevelopment plan to allow the ground floor retail space to be used as offices in December 2020.

Tenants

Corporate tenants in Rincon Center have included AIG and Salesforce, which moved in 2018 to Salesforce Tower, replaced by Twilio.

Restaurants

Notable restaurants in Rincon Center include Etrusca (1990–93, operated by the Il Fornaio restaurant group) and

Yank Sing Yank Sing is a dim sum with locations in the Rincon Center (opened in 1999) with a second location on Stevenson Street in the Financial District, San Francisco. The original location open at Broadway and Powell Street, Chinatown, San Francisco in ...

(1999–present).

Artwork

The ''Rain Cloud'' installation art work in the atrium was designed by the contemporary artist Doug Hollis and consisted of a continuous column of water drops falling from an eight-foot by eight-foot acrylic glass box at ceiling level perforated with 4,000 holes. It was removed in an early 2020s renovation that also removed an Art Deco-inspired frieze by Richard Haas on recent California history from the atrium and installed vegetated panels.

Gallery

Rincon Annex Post Office

File:Rincon Annex (San Francisco).jpg, Exterior of Rincon Annex, 2008, view east from intersection of Mission and Spear File:Rincon Center Entrance-9438.jpg, Rincon Center entrance, Mission Street facade File:Rincon Center Sign-9435.jpg, Detail of sign File:Rincon Center, San Francisco (2013) - 15.JPG, Eagle statue flanking main entrance File:Rincon Center, San Francisco (2013) - 14.JPG, Main entrance details File:Rincon Center interior Marker -9447.jpg, 1939 post office dedication plaque File:Rincon Center interior Parcel Post-9448.jpg, Former parcel post window File:Rincon Center interior Marker Post Office-9452.jpg, 1961 Post Office war memorial plaque File:Rincon Center Historic Marker-9442.jpg, Rincon Annex historic marker File:Rincon Center, San Francisco (2013) - 02.JPG, Entrance to elevator lobby

''History of San Francisco'' murals in Annex lobby

File:Rincon Center San Francisco Interior Hallway.jpg, Main lobby of Rincon Annex (parallel to Mission) File:Rincon Center, San Francisco (2013) - 07.JPG, Junction of main and side lobbies of Rincon Annex File:Rincon Center, San Francisco (2013) - 05.JPG, Side lobby of Rincon Annex (parallel to Spear) File:IMG_2181_sir_francis_drake_by_Anton_Refregier_Rincon_Center_San_Francisco.JPG, Anton Refregier mural, Panel #3, "Sir

Francis Drake Sir Francis Drake ( – 28 January 1596) was an English explorer, sea captain, privateer, slave trader, naval officer, and politician. Drake is best known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580 (t ...

" File:Rincon Center, San Francisco (2013) - 10.JPG, Refregier mural, Panel #10, "Raising the Bear Flag" File:Rincon Center interior Mural-9450.jpg, Refregier mural, Panel #16, "Building the Railroad" File:Rincon Center interior Mural 3-9451.jpg, Refregier mural, Panel #20, "San Francisco as a Cultural Center" File:Rincon Center interior Mural-9446.jpg, Refregier mural, Panel #27, "War and Peace"

Rincon Center commercial building (1988)

File:Inside Rincon Center.jpg, Interior of atrium, view northwest towards Mission Street File:Rincon Center.jpg, Atrium skylight detail File:Two Rincon Center Looking Up.jpg, Exterior courtyard of 1988 commercial building and residence towers, view southeast towards Howard Street

References

External links

Rincon Center: Slide show of the Refregier mural panels
* * {{Authority control Buildings and structures in San Francisco South of Market, San Francisco Post office buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in California National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco San Francisco Designated Landmarks Government buildings completed in 1940 1940s architecture in the United States Works Progress Administration in California Streamline Moderne architecture in California 1940 establishments in California