400 Montgomery
The Hayward/Kohl Building was designed by George Percy & Willis Polk for Alvinza Hayward, director of the Bank of California and one of the original investors in what would become the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. He commissioned the partners Percy & Polk to create a first-class office building, which was then completed in 1901. Featuring a building footprint in the shape of the letter H and a Colusa stone facade, it is also one of the first steel-frame “fireproof” buildings in San Francisco.
The lower stories have been redesigned several times, but the upper stories with their brick curtain walls clad in Colusa Sandstone remain unchanged. The Hearst Corporation purchased the building in 2006 and decided to invest in restoring the 100-year-old facade and renew it for the next 100 years to come.
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Giampolini Courtney was selected to do the extensive work required that included a stone replacement in kind with actual Colusa sandstone mined from an abandoned quarry. Colusa was used for replacement stone at building corners, stone window surrounds, sills, water-tables, and all mortar joints were repointed 100%.
