San Francisco tower lobbies are a portal into the past — and future

And what became of all those post-1950 lobbies, particularly those inside towers that were never standouts to begin with? Simple: Building owners gutted them to make way for glowing white or light-colored spaces with the clean lines of an iPad.

New structures have them — look inside the tall linear lobby of Salesforce Tower along Mission Street — but they’re especially prevalent in aging high-rises now doing their best to appear hip. Such as 120 Montgomery St. Or 50 Beale St. Or 201 California St.

And so on and so forth.

“Back around 2015, tech was really coming on strong, and owners wanted to seem bright and cutting-edge,” said Doug Zucker, a principal at the architectural firm Gensler, which has done several repackagings. “They’d put in the white stuff, and the gridded glass, and it has nothing to do with the building.”

Fortunately, some efforts to lighten the mood and attract tech firms show creativity as well. That’s the case at 88 Kearny, 22 stories of PoMo theatricality that opened in 1986 with a 12-foot-wide, 20-foot-tall lobby that had all the grace of a 200-foot deep tube. The new look has the obligatory aluminum panels painted white, yet arranges them in angled lines interspersed in thin paneled screens that broadcast a low-resolution blur of digital imagery toward the street, turning the trudge into immersive art.

Facing the accordion-like main wall, meanwhile, a flat field of dark wood veneer adds warmth and “gives the lobby a professional air,” in the words of Amy Campbell, the Gensler architect in charge of the makeover. The project’s “very limited budget” also prodded Gensler to retain the original lobby’s ceiling and floor, a sustainable touch that’s easy to miss.

Given the current state of San Francisco towers with high vacancies and low demand, the city’s current crop of lobbies might remain with us for some time. At some point, though, boom times will return — and the landscape of lobbies will be altered yet again.