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Historic Building vs. Fire Station: A Fight Nobody Wants

Updated: Jan 24, 2025 10:14
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447 Battery Might Be Stripped of Historic Designation

447 Battery with the Transamerica Pyramid in view, from Google Maps Street View.

What might happen if the precedent of removing historic designation succeeds?

What’s the historic designation program? What does it entail? And why?

In San Francisco, historic preservation has a reputation corroded by bad neighbors who want to preserve views. Armchair spectators imagine that it’s as easy as noticing a developer has submitted plans and then ringing up SF Planning to demand that a parking garage or dumpster get designated as historic. It’s a system some think can be gamed for selfish reasons.

Getting a building to be recognized for its historic value is, in reality, a long and rather thorough process. 

Historic Designation

If there’s a building that isn’t on the official landmark list, there are two routes for getting it reviewed by SF Planning. The first is by a community member nominating it. That could take several months. The second is a bypass where the district supervisor makes the recommendation. The reason this allows the process to move faster is because presumably the supervisor has already vetted the historic information about the property. In either case, the documentation required is significant and not free. It’s safe to say that each building with a landmark designation had to run the gauntlet to get there.

Has Designation Ever Been Removed?

So far, no building has ever been removed from the list. Buildings have burned down or become damaged to the point where they get demolished, of course, but that’s not the case with the property at 447 Battery Street. 

Woody LaBounty, President and CEO of SF Heritage, describes the brick building as “a survivor right on the edge” of the older Financial District. 

How is This Building Historical? 

The Jones-Thierbach Coffee 3 Company Building is a brick building in the middle of a busy, redeveloped neighborhood. In 2021, the Board of Supervisors and Mayor London Breed agreed to designate it: 

“The Board of Supervisors hereby finds that 447 Battery Street has a special character and special historical, architectural, and aesthetic interest and value, and that its designation as a Landmark will further the purposes of and conform to the standards set forth in Article 10 of the Planning Code.” (Source)

Materials are important when it comes to determining whether a building deserves landmark designation. It used to have stucco, which was removed at some point, possibly using sandblasting. SF Planning describes stucco as a “sacrificial” material because it’s “expected to steadily wear away as it is exposed to the elements, requiring reapplication.”

Coffee in SF

The building sprung up shortly after the Calamity and housed a few coffee-related ventures including German war-dodger Charles Thierbach. Jones-Thierbach coffee was such a popular export that in the big Panama Pacific International Expo in 1915, they were invited to showcase “in addition to other well-known consumer brands, including Folgers, Ghirardelli (chocolate), McCormick (spices), Heinz (ketchup), and Morton’s (salt).” 

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When the founder died, his son George took over and even became the head of the National Coffee Association in the 1930s and 1940s. He “traveled often to promote the brand, including at an event in Indiana with Joe DiMaggio, performing a “cupping” flavor test.” 

The history of the building stands in place for the history of the coffee business, and that’s part of what makes San Francisco and California so special. When you think of American culture, much of it comes from us – blue jeans, coffee, movie stars. Remember to zoom out, especially when thinking about tiny little neighborhood details.

Why is The Plan Changing?

The project was approved a number of years ago for a tower to be built with a new fire station, which everyone seems to agree is a good goal. At the time when that was all approved, 447 was part of the property but was intended to be preserved.

Enter Peskin (‘member him?)

LaBounty says that the supervisor at the time, Aaron Peskin, was a little worried about it somehow being caught up in some other project. That’s when everyone from SF Planning to the Historic Preservation Committee to the Board of Supervisors to the Mayor agreed that it was of historic significance. But nothing’s ever that simple in San Francisco, and Peskin’s worry seems to have come true. 

Screenshot of the property pulled from the Historic Preservation Committee Report.

LaBounty says, “They decided the original plan was not gonna pencil out or work financially. So the new plan is to build the fire station and demolish that building.” Last week, the Planning Department came to the Historic Preservation Committee to get commentary. “It’s still early days,” LaBounty says. But the situation is already sparking intense feelings. At the committee meeting, “[everyone agreed that] because this a resource, this would be a bad thing. We have to come up with some different options for how we might mitigate this horror.”

What’s On The (Coffee) Table

One plan is that they don’t do a project at all, which nobody wants. Another option is to preserve the building and make it pencil out. Then they have heightened degrees of ways they can preserve the building. 

LaBounty says, “The commissioners did not seem very excited about tearing down a landmark. Not one has been intentionally demolished. We want to save this building but it’s also a terrible precedent.” 

The problem that the SF Heritage Association is worried about is setting a precedent of stripping historical status from buildings. We have to wonder if this opens the door so that greedy developers can maximize the profit in adding new, sometimes tilty or ugly or penis-shaped, silhouettes to the city’s iconic skyline.

Is This About Housing?

While historic designation can be a tool of anti-housing or Not In My Backyard tomfoolery, this one is in Fi-Di. If it were in one of the more developer-contentious neighborhoods our hackles would be raised. But this is office space with a fire station near Jackson Square – not housing. There are other options like sticking with the original plan or modifying it in such a way to make things make sense. 

Meanwhile the SF Planning Department has been asked to produce a DEIR, which stands for Draft Environmental Impact Report. That documentation promises to be a juicy read, so stay tuned. 

“We are going to fight this to the highest degree,” promises LaBounty. He says we’ll see more of this subjectivity and selective reinvention of history with the Trump Administration. “Once we decide as a city that something is valuable and needs to be preserved, we need to stick with that and not drift with the economic winds of the time.”

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Bunny McFadden

Bunny McFadden

Bunny McFadden is a Chicana mother, writer, and educator in San Francisco.