San Francisco Landmarks
Four Seasons Hotel
(757 Market Street, 40 Floors, Built 2001)
Saint Patrick's Church
19 October 2002
(Click Photo to Zoom)
The following is quoted from a San Francisco Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board report dated 6 December 1967:
The church stands in the midst of the Yerba Buena Redevelopment Area, but has been marked for preservation by the Redevelopment Agency along with the church rectory abutting to the west and the PGE powerhouse to the north.
All older hotels and dwellings in the vicinity (post 1906 construction) are scheduled for demolition, and the buildings which replace them will be residential in character. The church will probably be a more visible landmark when the new construction in the area and the proposed pedestrian mall replace the closely built-up commercial fronts and automobile parking lots which now form its environs.
This brick church in the Gothic Revival style is the patronal church of the Irish in San Francisco. It was the second church in the parish and replaced a wooden church that stood on Market Street. When it was built in 1872, the fashionable residents of nearby Rincon Hill worshipped here.
The 1906 Earthquake and Fire gutted the building, leaving only the walls and tower. The church was rebuilt but without its two hundred foot tower. (For comparison, the Four Seasons Hotel which stands behind Saint Patrick's Church, is 398 feet tall.)