Russ Building

The Russ Building is a Neogothic skyscraper designed by George W. Kelham, and built between 1926 and 1927 in San Francisco, CA.

Its precise street address is 235 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA. You can also find it on the map here.

At the time of its completion in 1927 the Russ Building incorporated solutions that were quite advanced at the time, these included the city's first covered parking lot.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 2012 and 2016.

George W. Kelham was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Russ Building a reality:

• H.J. Brunnier Associates in charge of Structural Engineering
• Dinwiddie Construction as the Main Contractor
• Otis as the company in charge of the elevators system

The Russ Building can be categorized as a Neogothic building.

The Russ Building was completed in 1927. These were the late days of the Neogothic movement, which had been around for almost 200 years at the time.

Art-deco would soon take over US architecture, and therefore, even though George W. Kelham didn't venture into what was cutting edge in terms of style at the time, and took instead a more conservative approach to the design of the Russ Building, it is possible that the design already started showing some traits that would later become characteristic of the art-deco movement.

The Russ Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is a non-load bearing masonry facade. This type of facade became common during the period when buildings, especially taller ones, transitioned from load-bearing wall systems to frame structures.

Frame structures allowed facades to be independent from the building's frame, enabling the use of lighter materials and larger openings. However, it took some time for architects to incorporate these new posibilities into their designs, and so for a while they simply replicated the look and feel fo buildings people where used to seeing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features in the light-colored terracotta cladding, the prominent vertical lines and neo-gothic ornaments stand out.

Other materials found at the Russ Building include, granite, used for the floors, bronce, used in the elevators doors and in decoration details, and bronce, covering the lobby walls.