If I weren't
Walking San Francisco, I might never have known of the decorative flourishes on the imposing brick facade of the
converted coffee warehouse on the Embarcadero. The couple pictured above clasp happily in front of the
Palace of Fine Arts, the city's relic from the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.
The coffee merchants (there really were two Hills brothers)
invented vacuum packing and modern coffee tins, enabling them to expand their business from a portside coffee stand into a block long Mediterranean Romanesque edifice in the mid-1920s.
In the same era, the company adopted "The Taster" as the product's signature trademark, a fanciful allusion to the San Franciscans' imaginings of their coffee's Arabian and Eritrean origin.
Apparently they wanted to show off the leisure activities of their customers, as with these swimmers who look to be enjoying
Sutro Baths.
Proud Californians, they included a gold miner on the facade ...
as well as local baseball team, the Seals of the Pacific Coast League.
These visitors (tourists perhaps?) stand in front of Ferry Building just down the street.
The old building is currently occupied by some apartments and many offices, mostly used by Google and Mozilla.
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