July 13, 1898
The opening of a terminal for ferries traveling across San Francisco Bay was officially opened. The San Francisco Ferry Building was built as a replacement for a wooden structure that had been a ferry depot at that site since 1875.
The second and current version of the terminal in that region of California was designed by renowned architect A. Page Brown in the Beaux-Arts style. Construction of the San Francisco Ferry Building was the largest infrastructure project in San Francisco up to that time. A key feature of this building is a 245-foot (75-meter)-tall tower with a total of four clock dials. These dials each measure 22 feet (6.7 meters) in diameter. With its arched arcades, the San Francisco Ferry Building is a strongly reinforced structure that was able to withstand major earthquakes that ravaged the area in both 1906 and 1989.
The inauguration of this depot was marked by a great deal of fanfare. The next day’s edition of the San Francisco Call asserted, “Everybody was delighted with the arrangements and nothing but words in praise of the fine structure were heard on all sides.”
The first vessel to arrive at the terminal on that opening day was the ferry steamer Bay City. The San Francisco Call reported, “Her passengers were landed in the structure, but the passengers on the [ferryboat] Piedmont, which arrived three minutes after the Bay City, were the first to use the grand nave of the structure.”
Howard C. Holmes, chief engineer for the State Board of Harbor Commissioners, oversaw construction of the San Francisco Ferry Building and he was among those on hand for the structure’s grand opening. Other individuals affiliated with the board who attended those festivities were commissioners E.L. Colnon, P.J. Harney, and Rudolph Herold, Jr.
By the 1930s, the San Francisco Ferry Building was second only to Charing Cross railway station in London as the world’s busiest transit terminal. Having undergone extensive and often controversial renovations and restoration throughout the decades, the San Francisco Ferry Building now functions as a depot for the routes of the Golden Gate Ferry, San Francisco Bay Ferry, and Treasure Island Ferry services.
The San Francisco Ferry Building is a key link for other public transportation modes as well. Both historic streetcar lines of the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), for example, for example, stop on a regular basis on the pedestrian plaza in front of the building. In addition, the building serves as a terminal for a bus route operated by Solano County Transit (SolTrans).
The San Francisco Ferry Building is also the location for approximately 50 non-transportation businesses that include restaurants and retail shops. In 1978, this building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Photo Credit: JaGa (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:JaGa) — licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
For more information on the San Francisco Ferry Building, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Ferry_Building
Transportation History 
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