Look at that clock tower. Two hundred and forty-five feet tall, four clock faces, each one twenty-two feet across. You can see it from Market Street, from the waterfront, from the bridge.
And for thirty-two years, you couldn't see it at all.
In the late fifties, the state of California built a double-decker elevated freeway directly in front of this building. The Embarcadero Freeway — a wall of concrete, exhaust, and noise right across its face. The San Francisco Chronicle called it "a monstrous mistake" two weeks after it opened and suggested there was nothing wrong with it that a thorough wrecking job wouldn't cure. The freeway was so unpopular that no official ceremony marked its opening — nobody wanted their name on it.
And here's where it gets very San Francisco. Almost thirty years later, they put a measure on the ballot to tear it down, and the voters said no. A powerful Chinatown organizer named Rose Pak rallied the community against demolition — they needed the freeway for
crosstown access. So the building stayed hidden.
Then the Loma Prieta earthquake hit in eighty-nine and damaged the freeway badly enough to close it. The mayor proposed demolition. Rose Pak mobilized Chinatown again — nine hundred and fifty businesses threatened to shut their doors in protest. The Board of Supervisors vote passed six to five. One vote. One single vote is the difference between th
