Rincon Center is a complex of shops, restaurants, offices and apartments in downtown San Francisco. The center takes up an entire block bounded by Mission, Howard, Spear and Steuart streets. There are two buildings.
Rincon Annex is the former post office building designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood in the Streamline Moderne style and completed in 1940. The interior features 27 watercolor murals which were painted from 1941 to 1948 by the Russian immigrant painter Anton Refregier. He was inspired by Diego Rivera. The murals show the history of California.
On the outside, the walls are decorated with dolphins.
In the 1980s the building was put up for development by the United States Postal Service. The property was eventually developed by a partnership headed by Perini Land & Development Company. A new 23-story mixed-use building was added on the south side of the block that contains a new post office, offices, and 320 apartments.
More information about the apartments and Rincon Center can be found at the Rincon Neighbors web site.
Two stories were also added atop Underwood's original post office building and a large atrium was cut into the interior. The atrium has a food court on the lower level and balconies connected to office space on the upper levels. The atrium is topped by a 200-foot (61 m) long skylight and features a distinctive 'Water Column' in the center. The water feature is a continuous 85-foot (26 m) column of water drops, coming from an eight-foot by eight-foot acrylic glass box with some 4,000 holes in it placed at the ceiling level. The installation was designed by artist Doug Hollis. The design of the late 1980s mixed-use Rincon Center was led by Scott Johnson of Pereira Associates, the firm founded by William Pereira, designer of the Transamerica Pyramid, the tallest building in San Francisco.
There were many challenges involved in the construction of the adaptive reuse project. The story of the project's inception and construction was the focus of Douglas Frantz's 1991 book From the Ground Up.