Cityscapes 2: Reading the Architecture of San Francisco

Part pocket guide, part history, and part architectural primer, the companion piece to urban design critic John King’s Cityscapes: San Francisco and Its Buildings contains all of the wit and wonder of the first installment. In epigrammatic prose and with detailed full-color photographs, King highlights fifty structures that tell the story of San Francisco through architecture. Included are emblematic buildings such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, and the Palace of Fine Arts; but King pays just as close attention to less celebrated structures that embody the politics, architectural fads, and cultural values of the eras in which they were conceived. A fresh take on the familiar, Cityscapes 2 shows us how to read the structures around us as signposts and translations for the story of a multilayered and ever-changing city.