San Francisco Landmarks
)
)
)
)
)
10 January 2020
(Click Photos to Zoom)
Audiffred Building
1-21 Mission Street at The Embarcadero
Built 1889
The marker in the sidewalk reads:
Built by Hippolite d’Audiffred in 1889, with a cast-iron facade and a French mansard roof, this is the only building standing that witnessed the construction of the Ferry Building in 1896-1898. Together they are the only two buildings along the central waterfront to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire.
As flames spread east to engulf this area, firemen has given up on the block when barkeepers in the Bulkhead Saloon are said to have offered them two quarts of whiskey per firefighter and a firehouse full of wine if they would save the building. Whether the story, or some variation, is true – the Audiffred Building stood as the sole survivor on this block.
With three saloons on the ground floor and rented rooms above, the building became union headquarters for Andrew Furuseth’s Sailor’s Union of the Pacific. On July 6, 1934, International Longshoremen’s Union President Harry Bridges’ second floor office overlooked the site where longshoreman Howard Perry and Gene Olsen fell, shot by police.
San Francisco Landmark number 7, the Audiffred Building is a National Registered Landmark.
The building's luck held true for the next significant quake, Loma Prieta in 1989.
For nearly half a century, poor Audiffred had hunkered down in the dark squalor of the Embarcadero Freeway, unlovely and unloved. The quake damaged the freeway to the extent that it was eventually demolished after the years of political posturing mandatory for all matters of San Francisco public policy.Since 1993, the Audiffred Building has been home to the restaurant Boulevard.
The Audiffred Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 10 May 1979.