Tamara de Lempicka + Art Deco in 1940s San Francisco
By Therese Poletti, preservation director of the Art Deco Society of California
January 9, 2025
Unidentified (20th century), Lempicka off to Hollywood (detail), 1941. Framed: 12 3/16 x 12 3/16 in. (31 x 31 cm). Courtesy of the Tamara de Lempicka Estate
In September 1941, Tamara de Lempicka visited San Francisco for her first solo exhibition at a local art gallery. Organized by New York art dealer Julien Levy, the exhibition was held at the Courvoisier Gallery (formerly at 133 Geary Street). Lempicka’s 12 paintings and drawings in the show, many featured in Tamara de Lempicka, showcased her latest direction in painting. By then, the artist had already mastered the style we know today as Art Deco, with its bold shapes, geometric forms, and fantastic bright and earthy colors.
The term Art Deco comes from the 1925 International Exposition of Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. It refers to a modern style of interiors, architecture, art, design, clothing, and objects. First emerging in Europe, particularly France, during the period between World War I and World War II, Art Deco quickly spread internationally, including to the United States. As an artist who helped define the style, here’s what Art Deco architecture Lempicka might have admired during her 1940s visit to San Francisco.
Art Deco in San Francisco’s cityscape
Upon arriving in San Francisco, Lempicka would have been struck by many examples of the style in the skyscrapers from the 1920s. Dominating the skyline, these skyscrapers rose above the older, often more horizontal, office buildings designed in the Beaux-Arts style at the turn of the century. Because the 1930s were marked by a major slowdown in large building projects due to the Great Depression, the city’s skyline was almost frozen in time when Lempicka arrived in 1941.
San Francisco’s skyline in 1935. The Telephone Building (1925), in South of Market, is on the far left. Courtesy of OpenSFHistory / wnp14.4528
The artist and her husband stayed at one of the city’s top hotels, the Palace, during their visit. The Palace, rebuilt in the Beaux-Arts style after the 1906 earthquake and fire, was just down New Montgomery Street from the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company building, also known as the Telephone Building.
Main entrance of the Telephone Building, 2007. Photograph © Tom Paiva
Completed in 1925 by San Francisco architects J.R. Miller and Timothy Pflueger, the Telephone Building was the city’s first Art Deco skyscraper. From their hotel, the Baron and Baroness de Kuffner (as Lempicka and her husband were known at the time) might have seen the tower. It was 26 stories tall and crowned with sculpted eagles that glowed at night due to huge spotlights. Motifs on the exterior of the building, from terracotta molds, included a winged book symbolizing faster communications and a large Bell System logo over the main entrance.
Art Deco in San Francisco’s building interiors
While major new building projects were halted during the 1930s, architects and designers spent much of that decade modernizing building interiors, which included Art Deco designs and furniture. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1934, which legalized drinking alcohol in the United States, a plethora of swanky cocktail lounges, restaurants, and nightclubs followed, where the sophisticated, well-dressed Lempicka would have felt right at home.
The Patent Leather Lounge at the St. Francis, 1939
Lempicka and her husband may have visited several of these glamorous cocktail lounges downtown and in Nob Hill. At the time, the center of Union Square had a massive, gaping hole in the ground since the steel shortage had interrupted the construction of a novel parking garage. Right across from the square, however, the St. Francis hotel had a new cocktail lounge that opened in 1939, called the Patent Leather Lounge. The lounge was designed by Timothy Pflueger, and featured leather walls, a long serpentine bar, and a fantastic sculpted lucite ceiling.
Clift hotel postcard, 1934. Collection of Therese Poletti
She might have opted to go further down Geary Street to the renovated Clift hotel, where the Redwood Room bar and restaurant, designed by architect G. Albert Lanbsurgh, featured an extraordinary bar carved from a massive redwood burl, redwood walls, and stepped glass pendant light fixtures and wall sconces.
Top of the Mark postcard, circa 1939. Collection of Therese Poletti
If the couple ventured up to Nob Hill, they would have found more cocktail lounges, such as Pflueger’s Top of the Mark in the penthouse of the Mark Hopkins hotel. It opened in 1939, with a spectacular view of the city’s skyline, including the newly built Golden Gate and San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridges. A large round cocktail bar was in the center of the room. For cozier seating, patrons could also choose tables by the windows. Furnishings were in shades of rose, dark blue, and orchid.
Esther Bruton at the Cirque lounge, circa 1935. Image courtesy of the Fairmont
Another bar that might have appealed to Lempicka was the Cirque lounge at the Fairmont hotel, another Pflueger project. It had stunning gold and silver leaf murals on every wall, depicting circus figures by local artist Esther Bruton. The room featured a serpentine bar trimmed with chrome speed lines, a ceiling originally of silver leaf and an Art Deco stepped pattern, and leather benches and tables.
Art Deco in today’s San Francisco
Redwood Room, 2024. Image courtesy of the Clift
When Lempicka and her husband visited San Francisco, there were many structures and interiors of the Art Deco period for them to enjoy. Even today, while overshadowed by massive glass block towers of later building booms, most of the city’s Deco-era skyscrapers remain. And while restaurants and bars inevitably go through major interior renovations, the Top of the Mark, the Redwood Room, and the Cirque are all still around today, offering us an opportunity to visit, have a cocktail, and, hopefully, feel a little glamorous — just like Tamara de Lempicka.
