505 Sansome Street
Office building · Chinatown
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August 1849
The ship Niantic, built in 1835 and 119 feet 6 inches long, was hauled close in and beached on the mudflats here, her ballast and masts taken out and piles driven alongside to hold her. She was the first vessel on the San Francisco waterfront to be turned into a beached storeship, and some 150 others followed. A contemporary description has her hull divided into two warehouses entered by wide doorways in her sides, her bulwarks raised eight feet to make offices on deck, a balcony carried round at deck level under a verandah reached by a broad stairway, and the whole roofed in shingles and covered with her tenants' signboards.
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May 3, 1851
The emigrant ship Niantic was beached here when the water still came up to Montgomery Street, roofed over and fitted out with offices, stores and warehouses in the hull. The fire of 3 May 1851 destroyed all but the submerged hulk, which was then used as the foundation of the Niantic Hotel; the hotel stood until 1872.
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May 4, 1851
The fire that swept the waterfront burned the Niantic to her waterline; hemmed in by wood and canvas buildings, she was one of some 2,000 structures lost. Her unburnt cargo was covered by the collapsing debris, and the whole hull was buried under sand later that year so a building could go up on the site. By 1978 sixteen feet of fill lay over her.
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1906
Construction on the site had cut into the buried ship in 1872 and again about 1906; between them an estimated 70 to 75 feet of her stern and midships were dug away. By the time she was found again the city's buried gold-rush fleet had largely passed out of memory.
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1907
The four-storey Niantic Building went up on the corner of Sansome and Clay Streets. Digging its foundations turned up timbers, glassware and full bottles of wine from the storeship buried under the site, and one of its first tenants was the Shannon-Conmy Printing Company. The building came down when the site was redeveloped at the end of the 1970s.
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September 19, 1919
The Historic Landmark Committee of the Native Sons of the Golden West placed a tablet on the site marking it as the resting place of the ship Niantic. In 1976 the Landmarks Advisory Board asked that the tablet be moved onto whatever building replaced the Niantic Building.
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November 18, 1976
The City Planning Commission unanimously certified the environmental report (Resolution 7606) and approved a light-coloured 19-storey office building on the corner, 249 feet tall with shops on its lower floors and windows that open (Resolution 7607).
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May 1978
Construction in late April 1978 exposed about 90 feet of hull, including fifteen feet never uncovered before, and it was due to be demolished so the work could go on. A rescue dig ran from 4 to 10 May and took several hundred artefacts, many still where they had been stored inside the storeship; the hull was photogrammetrically recorded on 10 May and cut apart with jackhammers, saws and axes on the 11th. An eight-foot cross section, the stern, the rudder and the log windlass went to the San Francisco Maritime Museum; about 72 feet of hull left on site was bulldozed, its large timbers and copper sheathing also saved. Twenty-nine feet of the forward structure and bow remain buried under the lot to the west.
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1980
Two Transamerica Center, designed by architect William Pereira.
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1981
Assessor’s “built” date.
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Feb 1991
Tenant alteration of the 16th floor.
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May 16, 1991
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places at national level — the first San Francisco storeship, the best documented, and the only one whose cargo has been excavated and kept. Two thirds of that record is still in the ground.
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Jul 2005
Commercial/tenant improvement - demolition all, partition build back, server room.
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Jul 2005
Oti-2 12/fl, el, me, ls, sp.
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Sep 2005
Tenant improvement full floor restroom work, signage, visual alarm.
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Nov 2007
20th floor: commercial tenant improvement which includes: non structural & ceiling, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, life safety, fire alarm, finishes & mill work.
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Dec 2007
Office tenant improvement electrical.life safety electical mechanical under this permit.
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Mar 2008
Replacement of cooling towers and pumps.
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2011
Public lobby greenhouse
The two-storey glass greenhouse in the lobby was recorded as a privately-owned public open space, facing and connecting to Redwood Park, with granite floors, paintings and tables.
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Jun 2012
8th floor: tenant improvement, interior alterations only including demolition, new paritions and doors, new ceiling and lights. mep inlcluded.
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Sep 2013
15th floor-tenant improvemenmt includes new non structural partitions, restroom accessibility upgrade, plumbing fixtures, power & signal & lighting.
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May 2014
Remodelto existing elevator lobby. instlall new 2x2 led light fixtures & ceiling grid & tiles in common corridors. remodel & upgrade existing restroom to bring to code & accessiblility compliance. maher n/a.
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Dec 2014
14th floor suite 1450 commercial t.i. which includes demolitoin of inteiror partitoins, doors, casework, plumbing & finishes. new work includes installation of new interior partition, doors, casework & plumbing. restroom upgrades to existing restrooms. heat pump addition. n/a maher ordinance.
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Nov 2017
Basement: remove & replace existing diesel engine fire pump amd controller, suction/supply vallies, relief line, & city bypass. n/a maher ordinance.
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Jul 2018
Demolition of existing partitions, ceilings & millwork, new construction of partitions, ceilings light, fixtures, millwork & finishes, restroom accessibility improvement includes, stall partitions & reinstalling existing plumbing fixtures, defered: life safety, sprinklers, & fire alarm.
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Jul 2019
Demolition of non structural partitions, glazing, doors, finishes, millwork and lighting. new non structural partitions, glazing, doors, power/data, finishes, millwork and lighting. mep, life safty and sprinklers under seperate permit. n/a for maher.
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Aug 2019
Interior tenant improvement of e lobby and conference room. demolition non structural finishes, flooring, lighting, new non structural partitions, glazing, doors, power data, finishes, millwork, ceiling assembly and lighting.
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Aug 2019
11th floor - demolition all existing partitions, doors, millwork, ceiling grid, ceiling hard lid, flooring & equip. removal all ele from floor outlets and demod walls. remove mecj duct back to main loop. no struct.
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Aug 2019
19th floor - demolition all existing partitions, doors, millwork, ceiling grid, ceiling hard lid, flooring & equip. removal all ele from floor outlets and demod walls. remove mecj duct back to main loop. no struct.
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Nov 2019
2299sqft interior remodel to an existing cafe & mep. maher na.
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Feb 2022
Removal of exterior building envelope and roofing, structural demolition, new curtain wall and builindg envelope; floor infill @ 2nd floor; building lobby ti and ground floor cold shell space for future retail.
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Jun 2025
Replace existing honeywell xls-1000(est-3 eom facu) voice fire alarm control units with new generation edwards est-4 voice fire alarm system as per ca fire marshall info bulletin dated 9/4/2028 and interpretations (12-001) date 7/23/2012.
DBI holds 318 permits for this parcel, most of them tenant improvements on individual floors. The timeline shows the 24 largest by stated cost, plus the earliest on file; the DBI query in the sources below returns all 318. 3 of them are nominal $1 street-space or sidewalk permits. 5 expired or cancelled permits are not shown. The assessor's roll gives 1981; this address is recorded as built 1980. The city's inventory of privately-owned public open spaces has no entry for this building, so whether the lobby greenhouse recorded as one in 2011 is still open to the public is not known here.
Nearby
- 450 Sansome Street Same street
- 530–532 Sansome Street Same street
- Transamerica Redwood Park Same block
- 545 Sansome Street Same block
- 517–519 Washington Street Same block
- Transamerica Pyramid Same block
- 553–555 Clay Street Around the corner
- 559–561 Clay Street Around the corner