Hunter-Dulin Building

Pretty cool building. Lobby is really tiny. Worth popping in but really this building stands out for the architectural elements outside. Check out the ornamental concrete on the eaves, cornices and arches. Once you notice them check out the surrounding buildings too. It’s funny I walk through here every day and consider myself pretty observant but I guess I haven’t looked too closely before.
Here are some more details so you know what you’re looking at —
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This building is beautiful and makes me feel as if I’m in a movie every time I walk through the roundabout doors. The lobby is all elevators and a concierge to help direct you if you don’t know where exactly your going. Just gorgeous! I always look forward to this building when I go for meetings here. Close to Starbucks and Market St, where you can find anything.

I love working in this building. It’s close to everything: Food, Transportation, Embarcadero, Shopping, Tourist Spots, and major companies.

Sometimes my job makes me want to die. Going to work every day in this beautiful building mitigates it.
Welcome to historical preservation. The Hunter-​Dulin Building, completed in 1926, is the only building in the city «with Romanesque and French Château ornamentation» (1). NBC’s West Coast offices occupied the top two floors from 1927 to 1942 (2). In 1997, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (3). It underwent massive renovations between 1999 and 2001 (1), and now is as stunning as I imagine it was at its birth.
111 Sutter (that’s «One-​Eleven») is included on many walking tours of the city, as it is one of the remaining historical buildings left in the FiDi; with only 22 floors, it doesn’t block out the sun. When you look up, you get to see terra cotta walls and reddish roof and those big, stunning spires, which, according to my boss, resemble chess pieces.
I don’t think I’m giving a very complete picture of this place. The lobby’s high ceilings are all mural-​ed and arched, and around the corner in the hallway between the Wells Fargo and the Crocker Galleria, they put up a timeline of the building’s history to celebrate its 80^th anniversary, with lots of lovely photos of it throughout the years.
The best part, though, outside of the design, is its literary history: The offices of the Hunter-​Dulin building included one belonging to a Mister Sam Spade, private eye (4). I’ve told this to I don’t know how many people, and I think maybe one of them was as impressed and excited as I was when I heard about it. How much more local flavor can one building possibly have?
I think about this when I walk into the lobby every morning, and I wonder which floor Sam Spade’s offices were on, and what Hammett might have seen when he looked out the windows onto the Financial District of 1928.
For those not enamored of the past, the modern amenities are as good as any other well kept FiDi building’s, and all the decorations are in a style evocative of the period as well.
Stop in sometime and ask one of the lobby attendants for a tour — it’s 10 minutes of steeping in San Francisco history and culture that you can’t get many other places in the area.
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