History

Timothy Pflueger was the defining architect of San Francisco’s Art Deco decade. Born in San Francisco in 1892, he joined James Miller’s firm as a young draftsman and became a partner; together, as Miller & Pflueger, they produced a sequence of buildings that gave the city its Art Deco character: the 450 Sutter Street dental building with its Mayan-influenced interior, the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange at 301 Pine Street, the Castro Theatre, and, beginning in 1922, the Pacific Telephone Building at 140 New Montgomery. The telephone company’s brief was straightforward: a tall, prominent headquarters that would announce the company’s prestige and its technological modernity to the growing city. Pflueger’s response was to synthesise the Gothic vocabulary of the Tribune Tower competition — then dominating architectural discussion in the United States — with the setback massing requirements of San Francisco’s 1921 building ordinance.

The result was a building that reads differently from different vantages. From the intersection of New Montgomery and Mission, where the street narrows to a canyon, the tower’s full height is compressed and the Gothic crown appears directly above the entrance portal. From the elevated Salesforce Park to the north, now possible from the Transbay Transit Center, the building’s relationship to the surrounding Financial District towers — taller but mostly post-war glass and steel — makes its limestone mass and Gothic silhouette stand out as the anchor of the earlier generation of commercial San Francisco.

Pacific Telephone and Telegraph occupied the building until the consolidations that created AT&T Pacific Bell. The building subsequently passed through several corporate tenants before Yelp, Inc. made it their headquarters. The landmark designation has protected both the exterior and key interior elements, including the lobby with its original bronze hardware and period ornament. The building remains in active commercial use.