1.
44 Montgomery
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44 Montgomery is a 43-story,172 m office skyscraper in the heart of San Franciscos Financial District. When completed in 1967, it was the tallest building west of Dallas until 555 California Street was erected in 1969, the building was once the world headquarters for Wells Fargo Bank. It was sold by AT&T in 1997 for US$111 million, the building contains direct underground access to the Montgomery Street Station. List of tallest buildings in San Francisco 44 Montgomery Street official website
2.
Transamerica Pyramid
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The Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline. Its height is surpassed by Salesforce Tower, currently under construction, designed by architect William Pereira and built by Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, at 853 ft, on completion in 1972 it was the eighth tallest building in the world. The Transamerica building was commissioned by Transamerica CEO John R. Beckett, built on the site of the historic Montgomery Block, it has a structural height of 853 ft and has 48 floors of retail and office space. Construction began in 1969 and finished in 1972, and was overseen by San Francisco-based contractor Dinwiddie Construction, Transamerica moved its headquarters to the new building from across the street, where it had been based in a flatiron-shaped building now occupied by the Church of Scientology of San Francisco. Although the tower is no longer Transamerica Corporation headquarters, it is associated with the company and is depicted in the companys logo. The building is evocative of San Francisco and has one of the many symbols of the city. Designed by architect William Pereira, it faced opposition during planning, John King of the San Francisco Chronicle summed up the improved opinion of the building in 2009 as an architectural icon of the best sort - one that fits its location and gets better with age. The Transamerica Pyramid was the tallest skyscraper west of Chicago from 1972 to 1974 surpassing the then Bank of America Center and it was surpassed by the Aon Center in Los Angeles. The building is thought to have been the target of a foiled terrorist attack, involving the hijacking of airplanes as part of the Bojinka plot. In 1999, Transamerica was acquired by Dutch insurance company Aegon, when the non-insurance operations of Transamerica were later sold to GE Capital, Aegon retained the building as an investment. The Transamerica Pyramid has been the tallest skyscraper in San Francisco since 1972, the land use and zoning restrictions for the parcel limited the number of square feet of office that could be built upon the lot, which sits at the north boundary of the financial district. The building is a tall, four-sided pyramid with two wings to accommodate an elevator shaft on the east and a stairwell and a tower on the west. The top 212 feet of the building is the spire, there are four cameras pointed in the four cardinal directions at the top of this spire forming a virtual observation deck. Four monitors in the lobby, whose direction and zoom can be controlled by visitors, an observation deck on the 27th floor was closed after the September 11,2001 attacks, and replaced by the virtual observation deck. The top of the Transamerica Pyramid is covered with aluminum panels, the buildings façade is covered in crushed quartz, giving the building its light color. The four-story base contains 16,000 cu yd of concrete, the buildings foundation is 9 feet thick, the result of a 3-day, 24-hour continuous concrete pour. Several thousand dollars in quarters and change were thrown into the pit by observers surrounding the site at street level during the pouring, only two of the buildings 18 elevators reach the top floor. The original proposal was for a 1,150 ft building, the proposal was rejected by the city planning commission, saying it would interfere with views of San Francisco Bay from Nob Hill
3.
California Street (San Francisco)
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California Street is a major thoroughfare in San Francisco, California. California Street is one of the longest streets in San Francisco and it runs in an approximately straight 5.2 mi east-west line from the Financial District to Lincoln Park in the far Northwest corner of the City. The route has four to six lanes for its length. JB Monaco Market Street Photo Gallery
4.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
5.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
6.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
7.
Vornado Realty Trust
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Vornado Realty Trust is a real estate investment trust based in New York City. Vornado Realty Trusts origins can be traced back to a discount store chain called Two Guys, founded in 1946 by brothers Sidney. In 1959, the company acquired O. A. Sutton Corporation, manufacturers of the Vornado line of fans, air conditioners. The merged company was renamed Vornado, Inc, at its retail peak in the early 1970s, Vornado operated 53 Two Guys stores,65 supermarkets,240 Fosters Freeze restaurants, and other retail operations. Vornado began divesting its retail operations, and by the late 1970s owned only 60 Two Guys stores, the next year Interstate Properties took control of the firm after winning a proxy struggle. He liquidated Two Guys and, by 1985, real estate outstripped merchandising as the source of sales. In 1988, they raised their stakes to 27% but Trump pledged his interest as collateral for a personal loan from Citicorp and in 1991. In 1992, Roth and Alexanders creditors forced Alexanders into bankruptcy, Alexanders emerged from bankruptcy in 1993 as a real estate investment trust. That same year, Vornado Inc. was converted into a REIT, in 1995, Vornado bought Citicorps interest in Alexanders. In 1989, the Vornado name was licensed to a new company in the Wichita area currently known as Vornado Air, outside of the brand licensing agreement, the Trust has no relation to Vornado Air, LLC. In April 1997, Bernard H. Mendik folded his company into Vornado Realty Trust becoming Vornados co-chairman for $654 million in stock, in October 1998, he resigned from Vornado. On February 15,2001, the Port Authority announced that Vornado Realty Trust had won the bid for a 99-year lease for the World Trade Center, silverstein Properties was outbid by $30 million by Vornado. However, Vornado balked over lease terms and possible tax liabilities, silverstein signed a lease for the World Trade Center in April 2001. In 2001, the company acquired Charles E. Smith Commercial Realty, owner of a portfolio of assets primarily in Arlington, Virginia, Robert E. Smith and Robert P. Kogod were added to the board of directors of Vornado. In 2005, the company bought a 32. 5% interest in Toys R Us, in 2013, Steven Roth replaced Michael D. Fascitelli as Vornados CEO. Fascitelli had been CEO since 2009, in 2015, the company spun off its interest in Urban Edge Properties to its shareholders
8.
The Trump Organization
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The Trump Organization is an American privately owned international conglomerate based in Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It comprises the business ventures and investments of Donald Trump, the company was founded in 1923 by Trumps grandmother and father as Elizabeth Trump & Son. From 1971 to 2017, Trump ran the company as chairman, although he is no longer involved with its day-to-day management, the company remains under Trumps ownership. Daughter Ivanka Trump is also, in March 2017, listed as a vice president of the next generation management of the organization. The Trump Organization has interests in real estate development, investing, brokerage, sales and marketing and it lists involvement in 515 subsidiaries and entities with 264 of them bearing Trumps name and another 54 including his initials. It owns a New York television production company that produces television programs including the reality television program, the Trump Organization has divested a number of properties that continue to bear the Trump name even though Trump no longer owns them. For example, in February 2016, it sold its stake in Trump Entertainment Resorts, which owns the Trump Taj Mahal, the Trump Plaza, and the Trump Marina casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Since October 2016, The Trump Organization has also developed properties under the name Scion Hotels, the Trump Organization is the collective name of approximately 500 business entities of which Donald Trump is the sole or principal owner. Until his inauguration as President of the United States, Trump served as chairman and his three adult children and three unrelated employees served as key executives. Trump will retain his stake in the business. His attorney Sheri Dillon said that before the January 20 inauguration Trump will put the assets into a trust, which will hire an ethics advisor. She added that the Trump Organization will not pursue any new business deals. Elizabeth Christ Trump, grandmother of Donald Trump, founded Elizabeth Trump & Son in 1923 with her son Fred Trump who was 18 at the time, Elizabeth and her husband Frederick Trump had moved to the borough of Queens in 1906 where her husband began developing real estate. In 1918, however, he died of influenza leaving an estate valued at $31,359 Elizabeth had a talent for keeping the real estate business going after her husbands death. She had a local contractor build houses on an empty piece of property owned, sold the houses. Her vision was to have her three children continue the business when they finished school, but her middle son Fred, wanted to start earlier. She founded the company Elizabeth Trump & Son to give him his start, since he was under age, she signed all legal documents. Fred eventually became a real estate developer himself but Elizabeth would remain involved throughout her life
9.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
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Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP is an American architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm. It was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings, with a portfolio spanning thousands of projects across 50 countries, SOM is one of the largest architectural firms in the world. Their primary expertise is in commercial buildings, as it was SOM that led the way to the widespread use of the modern international-style or glass box skyscraper. They have designed several of the tallest buildings in the world, including the John Hancock Center, Willis Tower, due to their faithful following of Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohes ideas, Frank Lloyd Wright nicknamed them The Three Blind Mies. Notable SOM architects include, Edward Charles Bassett, Natalie de Blois, Gordon Bunshaft, David Childs, Myron Goldsmith, Bruce Graham, Gertrude Kerbis, Fazlur Rahman Khan. Lucien Lagrange, Walter Netsch, Larry Oltmanns, Brigitte Peterhans, Adrian Smith, indeed, Khan is responsible for developing the algorithms that made the Hancock building and many subsequent skyscrapers possible. Another notable SOM engineer is Bill Baker, who is best known as the engineer of Burj Khalifa, to support the towers record heights and slim footprint, he developed the buttressed core structural system, consisting of a hexagonal core reinforced by three buttresses that form a Y shape. Davis Allen, a pioneer in corporate interior design, had a tenure at SOM. Throughout its history, SOM has been recognized more than 1,700 awards for quality. More than 900 of these awards have received since 1998. In 1996 and 1962, SOM received the Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects, SOM is the only firm to have received this honor twic13 R+D Awards from Architect Magazine. In addition, a collaboration between SOM and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology, was honored with a fifth award. SOM has completed over 10,000 projects around the United States and in more than 50 other countries around the world, london, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Abu Dhabi. Smaller field offices supplement these in such as the Philippines. Burj Khalifa is the tallest man-made structure ever built, at 829.8 m, construction began on 21 September 2004, and the building officially opened on 4 January 2010. The towers architect and engineer was Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, george J. Efstathiou was the Managing Partner for the project. Bill Baker, the Chief Structural Engineer for the project, invented the buttressed core structural system in order to enable the tower to achieve such heights economically, Adrian Smith, who worked with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill until 2006, was the Consulting Design Partner. The primary builder is a joint venture of South Korean Samsung C&T, one World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower, is located in Manhattan, New York City, and is 1,776 ft high, making it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere
10.
Storey
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A storey or story is any level part of a building that could be used by people. The plurals are storeys and stories respectively, the terms floor, level, or deck can also be used in this sense, except that one may use ground floor and ground level for the floor closer to what is considered the ground or street level. The words storey and floor also generally exclude levels of the building that have no roof, houses commonly have only one or two floors. Buildings are often classified as low-rise, mid-rise and high-rise according to how many levels they contain, the tallest skyscraper in the world, Burj Khalifa, has 163 floors. As of 2013, the tallest planned skyscraper, Sky City, is planned to have 202 floors, the height of each storey is based on the ceiling height of the rooms plus the thickness of the floors between each pane. Generally this is around 10 feet total, however, it varies widely from just under this figure to well over it, storeys within a building need not be all the same height — often the lobby is more spacious, for example. Additionally, higher levels may be smaller in volume than the ones beneath them, in English, the principal floor or main floor of a house is the floor that contains the chief apartments, it is usually the ground floor, or the floor above. In Italy the main floor of a home is usually above the ground level, the attic or loft is a storey just below the buildings roof, its ceiling is often pitched and/or at a different height than that of other floors. A penthouse is an apartment on the topmost storey of a building. A basement is a storey below the main or ground floor, split-level homes have floors that offset from each other by less than the height of a full storey. A mezzanine, in particular, is typically a floor halfway between the floor and the next higher floor. Homes with a split-level entry have the main floor raised half a storey height above the street entrance level. In Macys Herald Square, there is a one and a floor between the first and second, this can be considered a split level floor. There are also car parks, also known as parking garages. Floor numbering is the scheme used for a buildings floors. There are two major schemes in use across the world, in one system, used in the majority of European countries, the ground floor is the floor literally on the ground and often has no number or is assigned the number 0. Therefore, the floor up is assigned the number 1 and is the first floor. The other system, used primarily in the United States and Canada, counts the bottom floor as the first floor, the existence of two incompatible conventions is a common source of confusion in international communication, sometimes even between communities who speak the same language
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