Winner Announced: Favorite SF Building
Author:Lindsey ShookWe have just crowned the next winner in our monthly online feature: Design Democracy. Hundreds of votes were cast for the 27 San Francisco buildings nominated as your favorites, with the Sentinel Building/Columbus Tower beating out the rest.
Design Democracy
Favorite San Francisco Building: Sentinel Building/Columbus Tower 
Located at 916 Kearny Street and designed by Salfield & Kohlberg, the distinctive copper-green Flatiron style structure was started before the 1906 earthquake, but not completed until 1907. It housed a variety of businesses, including the restaurant Caesars (credited with the invention of the salad of the same name) and a recording studio. It was beginning to show its age in 1970, when Francis Ford Coppola purchased and renovated it, housing his film editing studios (American Zoetrope) above and eventually opening Cafe Zoetrope, still a popular North Beach destination, on the ground floor.
Second and third place went to the Palace of Fine Arts and the Ferry Building (respectively), proving the city’s older, more classical buildings are dearer to your hearts than their newer, modern siblings.
From left: Palace of Fine Arts, the Ferry Building
Congrats to all that were nominated, and thanks so much to all of our readers who participated.
