Timothy L. Pflueger
Timothy Ludwig Pflueger 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. His work influenced later architects such as Pietro Belluschi.
Pflueger, who started as a working-class draftsman and never went to college, established his imprint on the development of Art Deco in California architecture yet demonstrated facility in many styles including Streamline Moderne, neo-Mayan, Beaux-Arts, Mission Revival, Neoclassical and International. His work as an interior designer resulted in an array of influential interior spaces, including luxurious cocktail lounges such as the Top of the Mark at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, the Patent Leather Bar at the St. Francis Hotel and the Cirque Room at The Fairmont, three of the most successful San Francisco bars in their day.
Pflueger's social and business connections spanned the city, including three private men's clubs which he joined: the Bohemian Club, the Olympic Club and The Family. He designed buildings and interior architecture for the latter two. Pflueger was highly placed in several important planning organizations: He was the chairman of a committee of consulting architects on the Bay Bridge project 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.
Early life
Pflueger was born the second of seven sons in the Potrero Hill area of San Francisco to German immigrants August Pflueger and Ottilie Quandt who had met in Los Angeles and married. Other Quandt relatives lived in the Noe Valley neighborhood, and, in 1904, the Pflueger family moved closer, to 1015 Guerrero Street in the Mission District, a melting pot neighborhood of blue-collar workers. At age 11, Pflueger took his first job working for a picture-framing firm near his home.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. By 1907, Pflueger was working as a draftsman and soon joined the architectural firm Miller and Colmesnil, under the guidance of James Rupert Miller, senior partner. Young Pflueger sketched ornamental details based on ideas from his bosses, and attended Mission High Evening School to further his education. In 1911, Pflueger joined the San Francisco Architectural Club, an organization that helped budding architects receive training in the informal Atelier Method where older experts taught the practical side of architecture including waterproofing, lighting and structural concerns to students who had no hope or wish to study Beaux-Arts in an established school abroad. Pflueger became thoroughly involved with SFAC's collegial activities and was chosen director in 1914.
Early career
In 1912, while Miller and Colmesnil were busy with their entry in the competition to redesign San Francisco City Hall as well as with the design of many new hotels, apartments and private homes, Timothy L. Pflueger was given the opportunity to serve as chief architect on a rural church project funded by The Family, a club to which Miller belonged. Pflueger designed Our Lady of the Wayside Church with a main theme of Spanish Mission Revival based on his childhood familiarity with Mission San Francisco de Asís but added his own personal statement: a striking Georgian main entrance topped by a scrolled pediment. 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.File:OurLadyoftheWayside.jpg|thumb|left|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.|Our Lady of the Wayside Church, a rural Catholic church in Portola Valley
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.
Pflueger volunteered for World War I in 1917, working for the Quartermaster Corps to design base facilities. He was first stationed in Washington, D.C. and then sent to San Juan, Puerto Rico to take part in base expansion there. Returning to San Francisco in 1919, Pflueger once again focused on the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, who now wished for a further doubling in size, extending their Stockton Street frontage 140 feet to California Street, and adding a seventh floor. A massive new entrance incorporating 17 Ionic columns was erected, topped by a pediment displaying a tableau carved by Armenian sculptor Haig Patigian. The Neoclassic-style project was completed in 1920. In 1984, the building was designated San Francisco Landmark No. 167.
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.J. R. Miller, relying more and more on Pflueger's hard-working energy, social conviviality and artistic talent, gave him a wide variety of assignments including designs for an automobile showroom, a firehouse and a number of private homes. Pflueger extended his proposed styles to include Aztec elements and Spanish Colonial Revival themes, the latter favored by several clients for their homes.
Miller made Pflueger his junior partner following their completion of the US$80,000 San Francisco Stock Exchange building at 350 Bush Street in 1923. The firm conducted business as Miller and Pflueger. The building at 350 Bush, a neoclassic design topped with a pediment displaying a sculpture by Jo Mora and later called the San Francisco Mining Exchange, is currently empty; it was designated San Francisco Landmark No. 113 in 1980.
Skyscrapers
Miller and Pflueger were selected in 1923 to build an expansive new headquarters tower for Pacific Telephone & Telegraph. In June 1924, Pflueger showed his plans for a $3 million skyscraper, 26 stories high, designed with continuous vertical elements and a progression of step-backs narrowing the floors near the top. Arthur Frank Mathews was brought in to paint a mural in the boardroom on the 18th floor. The structure was fully devoted to offices for 2,000 employees, 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, becoming the tallest building in San Francisco for the next 40 years, tied by the Russ Building in 1927.450 Sutter Street was completed on October 15, 1929, using a primarily unbroken exterior verticality without step-backs, featuring triangular thrust window bays, the whole decorated with stylized Mayan designs impressed on the terra cotta sheathing and inscribed in metals, marble and glass within the luxurious lobby. In 1983, Pietro Belluschi said that the vertical triangular faceted lines of 450 Sutter formed part of the inspiration for the similarly faceted exterior of 555 California.
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.
Artists
By the late 1920s, Pflueger was already working with a number of artists such as Haig Patigian, Jo Mora and Arthur Mathews who provided fine detail and craftsmanship to his larger designs.In March 1928, Pflueger published his submission for a new building to house the San Francisco Stock Exchange, featuring strong Zigzag Moderne themes with classicist notes. Miller and Pflueger won the competition for the commission. Eight months later, the Exchange committee decided instead to rebuild the Sub-treasury building at 301 Pine Street while keeping its Tuscan columns and entrance steps, requiring a completely new approach. Pflueger's first response was a sketch with little ornamentation. Construction began in December 1928. By January 1929, Pflueger's plans indicated prominent sculptures, bas-reliefs, inscriptions and carvings, to be detailed by local artists.
Also in January, Pflueger booked a flight in a small mail plane heading for New York but a winter storm forced the pilot and his two passengers down in the Sierras. The three men waited 36 hours exposed to the cold before being rescued. Pflueger immediately continued his trip and met with his Metropolitan Life Insurance clients regarding a third expansion project.
Early in 1929, Pflueger met Ralph Stackpole, an art professor at California School of Fine Arts and a former student of Mathews, who agreed to sculpt monumental figures for the stock exchange project as well as recommending and supervising other artists. Stackpole wrote later of his experience that "the artists were in from the first. They were called in conference and assumed responsibility and personal pride in the building." 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. 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.