"Every city has a landmark like this, a building through which one can read the larger history," John King writes in the introduction to his new book "Portal: San Francisco's Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities."
The Ferry Building has been a participant and spectator in a series of eras that shaped every American city: the industrial age of working waterfronts and railroads; the destructive period of freeway development and heedless urban renewal; and the "urban renaissance" of foodie culture and gentrification. Now, it must face the "doom loop" of big-city downtowns and looming threats of climate change. In telling this story, King, the urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, subtly makes the case for a return to the kind of visionary urban planning that made this architectural gem possible in the first place.
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