Timothy Ludwig Pflueger was an architect, interior designer and architectural lighting designer in the San Francisco Bay Area in the first half of the 20th century.
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49 Facts About Timothy Pflueger
2.
Rather than breaking new ground with his designs, Pflueger captured the spirit of the times and refined it, adding a distinct personal flair.
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3.
Timothy Pflueger's work influenced later architects such as Pietro Belluschi.
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4.
Timothy Pflueger designed buildings and interior architecture for the latter two.
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5.
Timothy Pflueger was highly placed in several important planning organizations: He was the chairman of a committee of consulting architects on the Bay Bridge project and he served on the committee responsible for the design of the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939.
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6.
Timothy Pflueger was a board member of the San Francisco Art Association starting in 1930, and served variously as chair and director.
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7.
At age 11, Timothy Pflueger took his first job working for a picture-framing firm near his home.
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8.
Young Timothy Pflueger sketched ornamental details based on ideas from his bosses, and attended Mission High Evening School to further his education.
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9.
In 1911, Timothy Pflueger joined the San Francisco Architectural Club, an organization that helped budding architects receive training in the informal Atelier Method where older experts taught the practical side of architecture including waterproofing, lighting and structural concerns to students who had no hope or wish to study Beaux-Arts in an established school abroad.
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10.
Timothy Pflueger became thoroughly involved with SFAC's collegial activities and was chosen director in 1914.
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11.
Timothy Pflueger designed Our Lady of the Wayside Church with a main theme of Spanish Mission Revival based on his childhood familiarity with Mission San Francisco de Asis but added his own personal statement: a striking Georgian main entrance topped by a scrolled pediment.
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12.
Subsequently, Timothy Pflueger was assigned by Miller to work closely with the firm's major client, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, who engaged in a succession of expansion projects at their San Francisco location at 600 Stockton Street.
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13.
Timothy Pflueger volunteered for World War I in 1917, working for the Quartermaster Corps to design base facilities.
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14.
Timothy Pflueger was first stationed in Washington, DC and then sent to San Juan, Puerto Rico to take part in base expansion there.
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15.
In June 1920, Timothy Pflueger passed his architecture licensing exams to become a certified California architect.
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16.
Timothy Pflueger was elected president of the SFAC later that year, taking office in early 1921.
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17.
Timothy Pflueger extended his proposed styles to include Aztec elements and Spanish Colonial Revival themes, the latter favored by several clients for their homes.
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18.
Timothy Pflueger's vision was strongly influenced by Eliel Saarinen's second-place entry in the competition to design the Tribune Tower in Chicago.
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19.
Miller and Timothy Pflueger sued for $81,600, alleging that Hobart's design was not significantly changed from Timothy Pflueger's original.
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20.
In March 1928, Timothy Pflueger published his submission for a new building to house the San Francisco Stock Exchange, featuring strong Zigzag Moderne themes with classicist notes.
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21.
Timothy Pflueger immediately continued his trip and met with his Metropolitan Life Insurance clients regarding a third expansion project.
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22.
Early in 1929, Timothy Pflueger met Ralph Stackpole, an art professor at California School of Fine Arts and a former student of Mathews, who agreed to sculpt monumental figures for the stock exchange project as well as recommending and supervising other artists.
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23.
The result was so effective that Timothy Pflueger used it on a much larger scale above the audience seating at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, where it extended from and formed a continuity with the incised art on the proscenium.
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24.
In Oakland, Timothy Pflueger flanked the stage with structures that appeared to be pillars supporting the proscenium but were instead layered, curved sheets of thin metal behind which lighting instruments cast light indirectly to give the columns a suffused glow.
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25.
Timothy Pflueger filed for and, in 1934, received two architectural lighting design patents, one for his ceiling grid with indirect lighting and one for the thin metal panels hiding lighting instruments.
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26.
Timothy Pflueger used the patented ceiling grid once more in the Patent Leather Bar, in 1939.
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27.
Timothy Pflueger's vision stayed firmly planted in the Moorish Revival style, complete to the iron scrollwork and amber shade redesign of two municipal streetlamps standing outside of the theater.
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28.
Timothy Pflueger worked with muralist Arthur Frank Mathews to achieve a rich palette of color most prominently displayed in a geometric floral pattern on the main ceiling.
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29.
Back in San Francisco, Timothy Pflueger designed the Nasser Brothers' 1,830-seat El Rey Theatre at 1970 Ocean Avenue in pure Moderne style, including a sleek tower topped by an aircraft warning beacon.
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31.
Timothy Pflueger designed a handful of unique schools for San Francisco Unified School District, including two elementary schools, a junior high, two high schools and every major building on the first campus of San Francisco Junior College, an institution that would later expand to become City College of San Francisco.
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32.
In 1932, Timothy Pflueger renovated the Nasser brother's New Mission Theater, bringing Art Deco stylings to the lobby in contrast to the Spanish Mission trimmings in the main auditorium.
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33.
Timothy Pflueger simultaneously worked on the remodeling of the Nasser's New Fillmore Theater, a sister design similar in many respects.
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34.
Timothy Pflueger created a cocktail bar and nightclub for Frank Martinelli and Tom Gerun in 1931, the Bal Tabarin, featuring a stage for live music and colorful indirect lighting from above metal fins in the ceiling and behind curved metal strips upstage.
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35.
Timothy Pflueger was then asked to design cocktail lounges for several hotels, completing the Cirque for the Fairmont Hotel in 1935, adorned with finely painted murals by Esther Bruton, and in 1939, both the Patent Leather Bar for the St Francis Hotel and the Top of the Mark for the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
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36.
The Patent Leather Bar used a metal-finned ceiling much like that which Timothy Pflueger had installed above the audience at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.
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37.
Timothy Pflueger was invited by California governor James "Sunny Jim" Rolph to chair the committee of architects who were given nominal oversight of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge project.
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38.
Timothy Pflueger's contributions were among the few buildings at the Exposition that received positive reviews.
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39.
Timothy Pflueger gained ideas from the ship's famous Art Deco adornments.
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41.
Union Square garage opened in 1943 with Timothy Pflueger's touch making it a full-service valet garage complete with a waiting room and rest rooms for shoppers and the option of having shopping packages sent directly from a nearby store to the garage or for the car to be delivered to the store.
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42.
In 1942, while America geared up for front line involvement in World War II, Timothy Pflueger received fewer assignments than he had been seeing previously.
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44.
Timothy Pflueger began to draw up plans for a 12-story cross-shaped medical teaching hospital for the University of California, San Francisco.
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45.
Timothy Pflueger's firm accepted a commission to excavate below the Mark Hopkins Hotel in order to create a bomb-resistant radio transmission center for AM station KSFO and shortwave programs of the Voice of America.
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46.
Timothy L Pflueger died suddenly at the age of 54 on November 20,1946, of a heart attack on Post Street outside of the Olympic Club after taking his usual evening swim.
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47.
At his death, Pflueger was not finished with the radical interior and exterior transformation of the I Magnin flagship store at Union Square, a sleek International design that remained influential for years afterward.
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48.
All his adult life, Timothy Pflueger maintained his residence at his childhood home on Guerrero Street.
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49.
Timothy Pflueger drove a green Cadillac convertible and was often seen with his steady lady friend on his arm.
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