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Article: Happy ending. (Western Wanderings).(San Francisco's Ferry Building restored)
- Article from:
- Sunset
- Article date:
- April 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Sunset Publishing Corp. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SAN FRANCISCO--I loved the Ferry Building long before I saw it in person. I loved it from repeated, obsessive viewings of the 1955 film It Came from Beneath the Sea, wherein a giant radioactive octopus swims into San Francisco Bay and, after taking out the Golden Gate Bridge, wraps its tentacles around the Ferry Building's graceful tower to--well, you can guess the rest.
Over the years, It Came and similar films taught me a little-known aesthetic rule: movie monsters are not drawn to mediocre architecture. Think of King Kong and the Empire State Building, or the London landmarks crunched by the Giant Behemoth. That octopus paid homage to a building as essential ...