From corporate emblem to city landmark.
It's not really a pyramid, and it's not owned by Transamerica
Inside the spire atop San Francisco's tallest building, the wind whips in between the evenly spaced girders so the air almost fizzes with kinetic energy amid a constant low-pitched whistle that changes to an eerie keen during fiercer gusts. Overhead, banks of movie-set-like lights are ready to illuminate the spire at night, while flights of scissor-stairs zigzag toward the top, where the "crown jewel," a lighthouse-like beacon, sends out a broad beam that can be seen from all over the Bay Area at night.
At the very tip, 853 feet above terra firma, one starts to feel a sense of mal de mer.
"It's moving 6 to 8 inches in each direction up here," said Rafael Ramirez, a utility engineer with the building.
This is the Transamerica Pyramid as few ever see it. Despite being an icon of the city, as much as the cable cars or the Golden Gate Bridge, the Transamerica in many ways is decidedly private.
Its jaw-dropping panoramic views can be savored only by the 1,500 or so fortunate bankers, insurers and brokers who work inside. It hasn't offered a viewing platform for the public since 1993, when the one on the 27th floor was closed; lobby access was ended two years ago in the aftermath of post Sept. 11 security concerns.
The stunning vistas from the top are captured on two live video feeds on television screens that can be viewed by pedestrians on the Washington Street side; KRON-4 TV also gets a live feed from cameras mounted atop the spire.
The average person experiences the building only by glimpsing the distinctive silhouette from vantage points around the city and bay, as a backdrop in countless movies and television shows set in San Francisco, and, of course, in ubiquitous tourist postcards and picture books. The public also is welcome in Redwood Park, next door to the pyramid.
The building is an anomaly in many ways other than its unique architecture.
For one thing, it's neither a pyramid nor owned by Transamerica.
For another, despite boasting a 100 percent occupancy rate at a premium price, its owners are asking San Francisco officials to slash the building's assessed value in half on the premise that its value has plunged.
The structure is so elongated that it's actually an obelisk. No self- respecting pharaoh would be caught dead in a pyramid this skinny; ancient Egyptians went for pyramids whose four triangular sides were at a 45-degree angle to the ground.
As for Transamerica, it was acquired in 1999 by Dutch conglomerate Aegon NV, which now owns the Pyramid Center -- the three office buildings on the block bounded by Washington, Sansome, Montgomery and Clay streets.
For a major multinational corporation, Aegon keeps a remarkably low profile; the only sign of its presence is a corporate flag fluttering outside on Washington Street next to the California and U.S. flags. Transamerica still exists as a subsidiary of Aegon, concentrating on financial services and insurance, but has only a handful of people based in the pyramid. Aegon itself has less than a dozen people there. Most of the 2,500 Transamerica employees are scattered around the United States; its headquarters is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
To sum up, by rights, it should be called the Aegon obelisk.
In fact, that's another of the building's ironies: It was built as a showplace to establish a brand for Transamerica, but the name and the structure have outlived the original intention, so much so that even people who work right around the pyramid have no idea what the name signifies.
"Yesterday, I swear I was thinking about what it means, Transamerica," said Firyal Abu-Hijab, who sells flowers outside the tower. "Honestly, I should know."
Transamerica was started in 1928 by A.P. Giannini as a holding company for his Bank of America and other enterprises. It grew by buying more banks, insurers and real estate foreclosure firms. Regulators eventually forced it to divest its BofA holdings; the company also sold its banks to focus on insurance.
(In yet another irony, Transamerica the building now has a rivalry going with the BofA tower. "We argue with BofA about who's taller," said Jeanine Layland, senior property manager of the Pyramid Center. "They have 55 stories and a penthouse and are built on higher ground. We have 48 stories and a 12- story spire.")
During the 1960s, "Transamerica diversified indiscriminately," according to Hoovers.com. In addition to its insurance and financial services business, it owned motion-picture company United Artists, Budget Rent-A-Car, Lyon Van & Storage, Trans International Airlines, De Laval Turbine, Western Firm Service and others.
But Transamerica had a problem: Nobody had ever heard of it.
John Beckett, the chairman of Transamerica, appeared in an ad campaign bemoaning his firm's anonymity: "We're bigger than 90 percent of the companies on the Big Board, but nobody knows us from Adam. Some pizza parlors are better known."
That's why Transamerica was keen to erect a trophy headquarters in San Francisco, one so stylish that it would sear the company's brand into public consciousness. It chose architect William Pereira, who had engineered the burning of Atlanta scene for "Gone With the Wind," won an Oscar for staging an underwater squid fight in "Reap the Wild Wind," and gone on to found a Los Angeles architecture firm known for "a certain leaning to science-fiction futurism," as Paul Goldberger wrote in the New York Times Review in 1977.
Pereira, in consultation with Transamerica, decided upon a pyramid, both for its identifiable shape and to admit more light and air onto streets below.
From the moment the building plans were announced in January 1969, the Transamerica was a lightning rod for criticism.
San Francisco's planning director, Allan Jacobs, said at the time that the "inhuman building" in its pivotal location at the beginning of Columbus Avenue, the nexus between downtown and North Beach, would have a "devastating effect ... on the fabric of the city."
There were fears it would cast a shadow that could "shroud the surrounding area in Stygian darkness," as an overwrought Chronicle article from 1969 put it. Many hated the look; some called it a dunce cap.
Others accused Transamerica of ducking tax obligations: It had hastened to break ground to take advantage of a soon-to-expire tax loophole. Lawsuits were filed to block construction, but the city's mayor, Joseph Alioto, was solidly behind the pyramid. At Alioto's urging, the Board of Supervisors voted to let Transamerica buy and close a block of Merchant Street to make room for the pyramid.
The controversy continued during construction.
In 1971, the Los Angeles Times architecture critic John Pastier called the building "the world's largest architectural folly." Pastier accused Transamerica of "blatantly attempting to put its 'brand' on the city. This is antisocial architecture at its worst; a form of disruption and anarchy as serious as anything that has occurred across the bay in Berkeley or Oakland."
Responding in The Chronicle, the building's architects tartly wrote: "If every new building were obliged to conform, in scale and style, to its immediate neighbors, our cities would still be aggregations of mud huts."
The Transamerica Pyramid opened in 1972 and was lavished with praise, hailed as an architectural masterpiece.
"This is the building that makes San Francisco look like Oz," Mitchell Schwarzer wrote in his 1998 book, "Architecture and Design in San Francisco."
Today, the building enjoys a rare 100 percent occupancy rate, according to Layland, the property manager. It commands an average annual rate of $50 per square foot. By contrast, Class A office buildings in the Financial District average $30.50 per square foot and had an occupancy rate of 79.9 percent in the first quarter, according to CB Richard Ellis.
Despite its impressive occupancy, the building's owner wants the city to cut its assessed value in half because of changed market conditions. The value was set at about $190 million in 1999 when Aegon bought the building, according to San Francisco Assessor Mabel Teng. Under Proposition 13, the value for both commercial and residential real estate can rise by only 2 percent a year.
"Transamerica is asking us to drop the assessed value from $197 million to $97 million in 2002, and they are asking to further drop the assessment in 2003 to $88 million," Teng said. "So the city potentially may lose $2.3 million in taxes for the two years."
The case has been postponed pending the outcome of similar petitions by owners of the Bank of America tower and Embarcadero Center to reduce their assessed values.
Teng's office determines value by looking at comparable buildings and by weighing occupancy, rents, capitalization rates and capital improvements. (The building managers spent about $6 million in the past couple of years for improved security and a lobby upgrade.)
The pyramid's owner isn't alone: Owners of 105 major commercial buildings want to have their valuations reduced. San Francisco would lose $62 million in taxes if they succeed.
"We are asking to have the property reassessed to bring it in line with current market values," said Nancy Green, a spokeswoman for Transamerica. "This is a very normal course of action in the real estate business."
"It is a huge percentage," Teng said of the request. "How could the value have gone down that much? It's a great building; it will retain its trophy status; everyone wants to be there. It's a premium address."
Alfred Hitchcock famously used San Francisco as a setting for many of his films, but on viewing a classic like 1958's "Vertigo," there's a sense that something is missing: The skyline consists only of plain vanilla boxes, no elegantly tapering spire jutting into the air.
"The pyramid is clean and sleek and beautiful like San Francisco," said Jo Schuman Silver, the producer of "Beach Blanket Babylon," which features the Transamerica as the focal point of Val Diamond's San Francisco skyline hat. "It's become a symbol of the city."
Transamerica Pyramid
Owner: Aegon NV
Height: 853 feet (Mount Davidson is 925 feet; Bank of America tower is 778 feet)
Opened: 1972
Construction cost: $32 million
Space: 499,000 square feet Class A offices in 48 stories, topped by 12- story spire
from SF Gate
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