Must seePhoto by CeeCee Weaver on Unsplash
Ferry Building
The 1898 Beaux-Arts ferry terminal with its 245-foot clock tower, now a food hall devoted to Northern California growers and producers.
You are standing in front of the Ferry Building, whose clock tower has been the first thing arriving ferries saw since 1898. Architect A. Page Brown gave it a 245-foot tower, four clock faces each 22 feet across, and a long arched arcade that once funneled forty-seven million passengers a year at its peak. For decades the Embarcadero Freeway loomed right over this spot, two decks of concrete that blocked the building from the city and the city from the bay.
After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged it beyond repair, the freeway came down in 1991. The building reopened in 2003 with the ground floor turned into a marketplace: cheese from Marin, oysters from Tomales Bay, bread baked that morning. The clock mechanism is the original E. Howard Special Number 4 from Boston, once the largest wind-up mechanical clock in the world.
It runs on an electric motor now, but the huge weight and sixteen-foot pendulum are still in there, motionless. Walk through the arcade when you are ready. The next stop is half a mile north.
