Timothy L. Pflueger

Timothy Ludwig Pflueger (September 26, 1892 – November 20, 1946) was an architect, interior designer and architectural lighting designer in the San Francisco Bay Area in the first half of the 20th century. Together with James R. Miller, Pflueger designed some of the leading skyscrapers and movie theaters in San Francisco in the 1920s, and his works featured art by challenging new artists such as Ralph Stackpole and Diego Rivera. Rather than breaking new ground with his designs, Pflueger captured the spirit of the times and refined it, adding a distinct personal flair. Beaux-Arts, Mission Revival, Neoclassical and International. and he served on the committee responsible for the design of the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. Pflueger was a board member of the San Francisco Art Association starting in 1930, and served variously as chair and director. While on the board, Pflueger helped the organization found the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Pflueger continued his grade-school education, graduating at age 13 in a mass ceremony held in Golden Gate Park for all the city's devastated public schools. After working with sub-contractor members of The Family on the project, Pflueger joined the club himself. The rural church was declared California Historical Landmark number 909 in 1977.

alt=Color photograph of the front of a church showing tall plants flanking an arched entrance, and a gabled roof covered by mission-style curved tiles. Colmesnil left the firm some time around 1913, leaving Miller to conduct business as "J. R. Miller". Subsequently, Pflueger was assigned by Miller to work closely with the firm's major client, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, who engaged in a succession of expansion projects at their San Francisco location at 600 Stockton Street. The first expansion, completed in 1914, gave the building a roof garden, dining room, kitchen and subbasement.

1920s

In June 1920, Pflueger passed his architecture licensing exams to become a certified California architect. He was elected president of the SFAC later that year, taking office in early 1921. mostly female. Pflueger's vision was strongly influenced by Eliel Saarinen's second-place entry in the competition to design the Tribune Tower in Chicago. In June, 1925, the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company Building was completed for $4 million ($ million in current value), becoming the tallest building in San Francisco for the next 40 years, tied by the Russ Building in 1927.

As the Telephone Building was being completed in 1925, a group of Methodist Episcopalians came to Pflueger, asking him to design a new skyscraper containing both a church and a hotel for them at 100 McAllister Street. After a dispute, Miller and Pflueger were fired from the project to be replaced by Lewis P. Hobart. Miller and Pflueger sued for $81,600, alleging that Hobart's design was not significantly changed from Pflueger's original. Three months after the hotel and church opened in January 1930, Miller and Pflueger won $38,000 in court, equivalent to $ today. Pflueger hired nine artists to help decorate the neighboring Stock Exchange Tower at 155 Sansome, and instructed them only to keep their themes light and airy. Diego Rivera was brought with some difficulty from Mexico to paint a two-story mural in the stairwell between the 10th and 11th floors of the Stock Exchange Luncheon Club (now the City Club). Stackpole himself worked with a crew of assistants to direct carve heroic figures in stone above the tall 155 Sansome entrance, as well as carving two large sculpture groups flanking the Tuscan columns of 301 Pine Street. He used the patented ceiling grid once more in the Patent Leather Bar, in 1939. for $300,000 ($ in today's dollars) in a largely Spanish Baroque style which evoked cathedrals in Spain and Mexico. Churrigueresque elements were used sparingly on the facade, and ornate tile detailing was employed in the vestibule, ticket booth and the lobby. A canopy modeled after ancient Roman silk brocade shelters was fashioned of steel lath and plaster and painted with Asian and Buddha figures to overhang the main theater seating area. The whole was an eclectic assemblage of styles. with a grand facade flanked by twin minarets that glowed red at night. Pflueger's vision stayed firmly planted in the Moorish Revival style, complete to the iron scrollwork and amber shade redesign of two municipal streetlamps standing outside of the theater. Pflueger worked with muralist Arthur Frank Mathews to achieve a rich palette of color most prominently displayed in a geometric floral pattern on the main ceiling. featured motifs based on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. Pflueger included zigzag patterns in the twin-towered facade trimmed in neon accents, and brought Streamline Moderne stylings to the interior via sweeping curves in steel banister railings as well as Mayan touches in the stepped mirrors. The $250,000 State Theatre appeared Spanish Colonial with its tiled roof and concrete bas-relief exterior, but turned to Streamline Moderne in a 1,529-seat interior that featured chrome railings, plush carpet and indirect lighting. Aztec elements were incorporated in the proscenium design. The $300,000 Senator Theatre was delayed in construction by the discovery of running water under the foundation, a condition that required channelization and pumps. The movie palace's eclectic theme was largely Egyptian with Moorish, Asian and Aztec details dominated by a landmark tower topped by a giant faceted amber glass gem lit from within. in pure Moderne style, including a sleek tower topped by an aircraft warning beacon. A mirrored foyer in black and gold held floral and geometric accents, and twin curved stairways to the balcony flanked the foyer. design, Pflueger took his inspiration from Green Mansions, a romantic fantasy novel by William Henry Hudson set in the Guyana jungle of Venezuela. Tropical rain forest motifs were used throughout the theater, including climbing vines, waterfalls, parrots and emerald green lighting. As with his other works, Pflueger mixed together sources from around the world, adding images of Greek and Egyptian gods and goddesses as well as Egyptian lotuses to the primarily jungle theme. Plans were complete in November and in December 1930 ground was broken in a ceremony that called for "prosperity celebration". Commissioned by the Nasser Brothers, In the interest of economy, the Alameda's floor plan was nearly identical to that of the El Rey Theatre, including twin curved staircases, and some floral and geometric elements were borrowed from the Paramount.

In 1932, Pflueger renovated the Nasser brother's New Mission Theater, bringing Art Deco stylings to the lobby in contrast to the Spanish Mission trimmings in the main auditorium. In 1993, the theater closed. The theater, now designated San Francisco Landmark No. 245, was purchased by Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas and completely renovated to its original splendor, opening its doors once again to patrons in December 2015. Pflueger simultaneously worked on the remodeling of the Nasser's New Fillmore Theater, a sister design similar in many respects. The New Fillmore closed in 1957 and was demolished to make way for an urban redevelopment project.

Cocktail lounges

During Prohibition, Pflueger designed bars for private clubs such as the Stock Exchange Luncheon Club where members kept their personal bottles in small lockers behind the bar, and two bars for The Family, one at the Family Farm in Woodside and one at the clubhouse in San Francisco. Pflueger created a cocktail bar and nightclub for Frank Martinelli and Tom Gerun in 1931, the Bal Tabarin, featuring a stage for live music and colorful indirect lighting from above metal fins in the ceiling and behind curved metal strips upstage. When Prohibition ended in December 1933, Bal Tabarin received an immediate renovation by Pflueger along with a liquor license from the state. Pflueger was then asked to design cocktail lounges for several hotels, completing the Cirque for the Fairmont Hotel in 1935, adorned with finely painted murals by Esther Bruton, and in 1939, both the Patent Leather Bar for the St. Francis Hotel and the Top of the Mark for the Mark Hopkins Hotel. The Patent Leather Bar used a metal-finned ceiling much like that which Pflueger had installed above the audience at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland. A padded, serpentine bar snaked through the room's mirror, chrome and black leather decor.

Bay Bridge alt=Two images shown side by side for comparison, the first being an engineering sketch of a bridge tower and the second being a monochrome photograph of the tower taken during construction. Apparent differences include bent vertical supports straightened and tilted inwards, and a homogenization of the inner cross members from a complex arrangement to a simple vertical repetition of five large Xes. Pflueger was invited by California governor James "Sunny Jim" Rolph to chair the committee of architects who were given nominal oversight of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge project. Arriving two years into the design phase of the bridge, Pflueger was stymied at every turn by civil engineers citing the inflexible budget in his attempts to bring a more artistic theme to the bridge. A heroic figure of a giant man standing at the central anchorage between the two main suspension spans was suggested and quickly canceled; all that remains of the proposal is a 14-inch study modeled by Ralph Stackpole. The committee of architects succeeded mainly in making the suspension bridge towers more streamlined in appearance by getting rid of the civil engineer's plans for a greater number of horizontal cross members. Pflueger very likely designed the stepped semicircular tunnel entrance and exit portals and, by mounting a campaign of public pressure, prevented the bridge from being painted black, successfully substituting a silvery aluminum-based paint instead. When the bridge was completed, Pflueger designed the Transbay Terminal, the main transit center for the railroad train tracks on the south half of the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, that carried the electric commuter trains of the Southern Pacific, the Key System, and the Sacramento Northern Railroad.

Golden Gate International Exposition

For the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939–1940 on Treasure Island, Pflueger joined a committee of well-known Beaux-Arts architects and was frustrated in establishing a more modern design scheme, When the Exposition's investors failed to turn a profit in 1939, they decided to extend the fair another year. For the summer of 1940, Pflueger put together a large exhibit of Art in Action, showing a number of artists on display, engaged in creating works. Alfred Frankenstein of The New York Times visited in June and wrote "Here the visitor is privileged to observe a kind of twenty-ring circus of art... On the floor, in a series of little ateliers, sculptors, painters, lithographers, etchers, ceramicists, weavers and whatnot are at work under the direct observation of the public." Pflueger once again brought Diego Rivera to San Francisco, this time to serve as the main attraction at "Art in Action". Rivera painted Pan American Unity on ten steel-framed panels spanning 74 feet in width and reaching 22 feet in height. For the second time, Rivera included Pflueger in a mural of his. Some 68 artists had participated by the end of September when the Exposition was closed. Rivera was not finished, however; he and two assistants labored for two more months in the empty exposition hall. On November 30 and December 2, 30,000–35,000 visitors came to Treasure Island to view the completed mural.

1940s

alt=A color photograph of a ten-story retail storefront showing a plain white stone exterior containing eight rows and eight columns of windows set flush with the white stone. Above the windows, the name of the store is shown in lower-case gray letters: Macy's. The Macy's complex at Union Square includes this building which was once I. Magnin's flagship location. The flat face of white stone and plate glass, an example of International style, was Pflueger's final work, completed in 1948. In 1938, Pflueger sailed to Paris with Grover Magnin, head of the I. Magnin department store chain, aboard . The two men investigated French shopping ideas that could be brought back and used at American department stores. Pflueger gained ideas from the ship's famous Art Deco adornments. Magnin and Pflueger went to Venice and Milan as well, but found very little of use to them on their short European trip. The $3 million I. Magnin store on Wilshire (currently the Wilshire Galleria) opened in Los Angeles on February 10, 1939, with an interior completely devoted to Pflueger's concept of luxuriously separate boutique spaces within which individual sales items would receive unique attention. Pflueger's interior was attuned to women's fashions: the ground level floor was laid with rose-beige marble from France, pink velvet counter tops held gloves for trying on, rose-beige leather panels covered the walls of the shoe salon and the same leather served as covering for sofas and chairs that were provided by Neel D. Parker, interior designer and Pflueger's fellow club member from The Family. Grover Magnin continued to work with Pflueger on three more stores into the 1940s.

All his adult life, Pflueger maintained his residence at his childhood home on Guerrero Street. When entertaining downtown late into the evening, he was known to spend an occasional night at the Olympic Club. Pflueger drove a green Cadillac convertible and was often seen with his steady lady friend on his arm. Pflueger never married and left no children.

In 1990, a bas-relief of influential San Franciscans was sculpted over the facade of 235 Pine Street, a 26-story skyscraper. Timothy L. Pflueger was the only architect among those memorialized. In 2008, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to change the name of Chelsea Place, a small alley leading to the garage of the 450 Sutter Street building, to Timothy Pflueger Place.