APRIL 2009 » book review

Bay Area Chameleon

Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger
by Therese Poletti
Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY; 2008
244 pp.; hardcover; 210 color illustrations; $55
ISBN 978-1-56898-756-9

Reviewed by Eve M. Kahn

Architects without signature styles or favorite building types make for difficult monograph topics, which is one possible explanation for the lack of any volume until now about Timothy Ludwig Pflueger (1892-1946). He has also likely evaded book publishers' attention because the Art Deco products of his 1920s heyday do not fit tourists' preconception of streetscapes in his hometown, San Francisco – the rows of Victorian "painted ladies" that make for good coffee-table tomes. But this under-appreciated designer defined portions of the region's skyline, and created some of its most entertaining spaces. He managed all this without explaining himself much. Although a substantial portion of his office archive survives, his correspondence and diaries are curt, and he left behind no philosophizing lecture texts or self-revealing memoirs. His buildings, including office spires, theaters, schools and houses, have pure populist appeal, and an impressive percentage of them still stand.

Therese Poletti, a business journalist, first learned about him upon stepping inside one of his early masterpieces: the 1925 Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Building on New Montgomery Street, a terra-cotta ziggurat which was the city's first high rise. Poletti spotted a vitrine in the lobby full of photos and clippings about the skyscraper's history, and grew especially curious about a portrait of Pflueger: "a slightly rumpled man, his hair blowing off to the side, a grin on his face, and a big, distinct nose." On the Pflueger research trail, she has interviewed hundreds of people, including building owners and managers and Pflueger's family. Yet he remains something of a cipher, to her and to readers.

We do know that his parents, August and Ottilie, were German Lutheran immigrants who struggled to make ends meet. August, a tailor, was also a frustrated poet and musician, a "stern and strict" figure who insisted that his six sons take piano lessons. (Since August's shop was right below the parlor where the boys practiced, he could pound on the ceiling if they hit a wrong note.) Tim Pflueger seems to have escaped this dour upbringing by plunging himself into client-pleasing, flamboyant architecture.

By age 15, just out of grammar school, he was serving as a draftsman at San Francisco firms. The city was so quickly rebuilding after the 1906 fire and earthquake that construction-related companies were all desperate for staff: "Five architectural draughtsmen, at once," read a typical period ad that Poletti found in the San Francisco Examiner.

Pflueger squeezed in evening coursework at a high school and then the San Francisco Architectural Club, studying "life drawing (of nude models), watercolor, structural design, steel, and concrete," Poletti reports. He quickly became known as a precocious talent at a prominent firm headed by James R. Miller. The young office boy, Poletti writes, "was exceptionally fast at drawing up initial sketches, often coming up with requested renderings for clients in a day."

Despite the self-imposed tight deadlines, he remained steadily jovial while dealing with coworkers, clients and fellow Architectural Club members. By the mid-1920s, he had been named president of the club and a name partner in Miller's practice, in charge of projects as grand and varied as Spanish Baroque theaters and Neoclassical and Moderne stock exchanges.

Pflueger remained Miller's loyal post-ampersand partner until the older architect retired in 1937. (Pflueger seems to have been a creature of habit in his home life, too; he never moved out of his modest childhood house, and his lifelong roommate there was his mother.) Pflueger seems not to have minded sharing credit with Miller, although the client pitches were clearly Tim's: "Mrs. does not like Aztec elevation," he wrote in his laconic diary, after one unsuccessful house proposal. Pflueger also assembled the construction teams, which included artisans as prominent as sculptor Ralph Stackpole and muralist Diego Rivera.

Poletti's project descriptions explain how Pflueger amalgamated and adapted design precedents: he could juxtapose Egyptian and Amazon rainforest scenery at a single eye-popping theater, or elongate Mayan motifs for a 26-story office shaft. Her slightly dry but thorough passages note which staircases and hallways lead where, and which metal ceiling fins cleverly conceal air-conditioning vents or skylight trusses.

In the late 1930s, after the Depression dried up budgets for Pflueger's extravagances, he calmly switched styles; one of his last buildings, a boxy plywood colonnade for the Golden Gate International Exposition, has entasis-free columns as if foreshadowing Lincoln Center. (He never quite turned cold Miesian, however; he gilded those columns, and flanked them with 180 ft.-long murals about the history of the American West.)

Poletti does not speculate much on why he was such a determined crowd-pleaser and chameleon; there's not enough archival material to support psychoanalysis anyway. His critics spent their time gushingly calling his designs "patterned like a brocade, shining like silk and lovely as old lace" or perhaps "severe but thoroughly virile." But he seems to have just focused on getting the next job, and getting it done. TB

WEB EXTRA: Additional photos from Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger

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