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San Francisco InterContinental as seen from Howard and Sixth
InterContinental is the California rage with two new hotels in the past few months. The San Francisco InterContinental is the largest new hotel to open in San Francisco in 20 years and The Clement in Monterey is the city’s only newly built hotel in nearly 20 years.
The New York Times published a review of the San Francisco InterContinental the week before last. The review starts off with the provacative statement, “As San Francisco’s largest new hotel in two decades, the 32-story InterContinental San Francisco has prompted its share of architectural controversy. “
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Front View of InterContinental San Francisco from across Howard Street
I have visited the San Francisco InterContinental hotel a couple of times, but at the wrong time of day to be allowed a room tour as I referenced in this blog post.
Yesterday, after reading the NYT review, I asked my wife to look at a picture of a building and give me her impressions. She had never seen the San Francisco InterContinental hotel.
Our conversation went something like this as she looked at the photo shown at the top of the blog post (click on the photo for a larger image):
K – “Are there windows missing?
Ric – “What? No. Those are windows with open curtains. It is a hotel building in San Francisco.”
K- “Oh. My initial impression was the building is a prison.”
K – “The lines running up the building give the appearance of grain silos. There is no decoration on the exterior walls. Look at the molding on the tops of the buildings around it. Why did they make it so plain looking?”
I guess my wife falls into the dislike the building exterior camp. The floor to ceiling windows inside the rooms are a feature we have loved in hotels like Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Centre. The view is an attribute of the hotel in my opinion.
Here is another review from the San Francisco Chronicle back in February 2008.
