Most of the 31 high-rise window failures reported during March’s windstorms in San Francisco were found to have occurred long before the storms hit. This is according to an investigator’s report presented to the San Francisco Building Inspection Commission.

The report, conducted by Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. investigators, discovered that dozens of the broken glass lites had previously been affected by heat or debris. Photo courtesy of Sharon Hahn Darlin.

Broken glass from compromised windows at several high-rise buildings crashed into the streets of downtown San Francisco during fierce windstorms this past winter. The winds, topping 75 mph, wreaked havoc on windows that were apparently already damaged due to existing issues. The report, conducted by Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. investigators, discovered that dozens of the broken glass lites had previously been affected by heat or debris. There were also problems with window hardware and glass contamination.

“The report indicates that the glass failures were largely preventable and were primarily caused by existing broken windows that had not been repaired,” a San Francisco Department of Building Inspection spokesperson said in a written statement. “It is critical that building managers identify, secure and fix broken windows immediately so they don’t endanger the public or cause additional property damage, especially before a large storm.”

In the report, investigators recommended facade designers and contractors avoid using spandrel glass. They also recommended building owners adopt more specific systems for detecting, reviewing and documenting damage to building facades. Additionally, they suggest visual inspections of any building opening that contains glass be required at a five-year mark, following periodic facade inspections for buildings 15 stories or taller.

As a result of the findings, the San Francisco Building Inspection Commission plans to inspect all buildings 15 stories and taller constructed after 1998. Neville Pereira, deputy director of Permit Services, says the Commission is also considering local law changes to update its façade inspection program.

The report’s investigators found that the first reported window to fail, which broke free from the former Bank of America Building and fell more than 130 feet, suffered prior cracking damage due to heat stress. The investigators indicated the stress was likely the result of temperature changes between the center and the corner of the window, possibly due to contact with insulation.

Another instance, this time at the Millennium Tower, involved a 49th-floor window. The window broke free from its support arms and eventually shattered when it slammed against the building. Investigators learned the damaged system had faulty window hardware. Shards from the broken window shattered several windows below the site and broke 17 glass lites at the Salesforce East building.

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For more than 50 years, shards of colorful glass, preserved in 25 carefully labeled envelopes, had been stored in an old Italian shoe box under Fred McDonald’s bed. The broken bits, taken from bombed and bullet-riddled churches throughout Europe during World War II, represented more than just shattered dreams and lives. To McDonald, a Seattle native who died in San Francisco in 2002, they were tangible links that fused history to the present, as well as the future.

Now that glass is the showpiece of an exhibit at the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco’s Civic Center. “Remembered Light” includes the works of 13 artists who used those fragments, along with McDonald’s memories, to fashion new stained glass windows, sculptures and 3D pieces.

At the end of its run — the exhibit will be open Wednesday-Sunday through Nov. 20 — the works are destined for a more permanent installation in the Presidio Chapel.

Armelle Le Roux, a celebrated stained glass artist who has worked with teams restoring stained glass at San Francisco City Hall and managed prominent projects for Grace Cathedral and for New York City’s St. Thomas Church, learned of the hidden gems through an acquaintance and was the first artist to realize the potential of McDonald’s treasure trove.

She met with McDonald to discuss ways to bring the glass back into the light.

“At the time,” Le Roux says, “we talked about creating some sort of memorial piece. But because the glass had been saved as separate pieces, each with a name and history, everything had meaning, and I didn’t want to lose that.”

Le Roux began creating two stained glass pieces that incorporated two sets of shards, working them into designs based on their provenance and McDonald’s recollections. Eventually, she brought in other artists to create additional pieces.

Ariana Makau, an Oakland-based glass artist and conservator and founder of Nzilani Glass, says she was immediately struck by the project.

“It intrigued me on multiple levels,” Makau says. “It was like traveling through space and time, the way each piece of glass had been documented. That he had the foresight to do that appealed to me as a conservator.”

McDonald, an Episcopal minister, traveled to Germany in the early 1930s and witnessed the rise of Adolph Hitler, a man he first admired but came to despise. When was broke out, McDonald enlisted as a chaplain in the US Army, assigned first to San Francisco’s Fort Mason and later to the 12th Army, under the command of the legendary Gen. Omar Bradley. He soon found himself following the advancing troops through England, France, Belgium and, finally, Germany.

McDonald was tasked, says his great-nephew, San Francisco restaurateur Bruce McDonald, with finding suitable churches to hold services for all the non-Catholic soldiers. His travels included several places he’d visited during peace time, where he began picking up the broken remnants of stained glass windows.

“He was quite a packrat throughout his life,” Bruce says. “He collected menus from restaurants around the world. He loved to save things and always said that sometimes, it’s a small thing that brings back a memory.

As McDonald gathered the shards, he tucked them in envelopes and mailed them home to his mother. By war’s end, he had mailed 25 envelopes and collected more than just glass. He had documented the coordinates and the city where each piece was found and his observations of what remained after the battles. About one, he wrote:

“On or about Oct. 23rd, I entered the first German city to fall to our forces, the imperial but now roofless city of Aachen, a good thousand years old. A very new Church of the Holy Ghost on the outskirts had been the scene of a firefight and a wrecked tram stood by the forlorn and empty church. Down by the Cathedral, I saw an aged woman lugging two suitcases as she crawled over stone piles. Where was she going with her pitiful burden?”

“This church, obliterated during the Battle of Britain in August 1940, was a favorite of high church Episcopalians from the Pacific Northwest. In 1933, I had worshiped there many times, a special wrench to find this favorite ‘Fortress of the Faith’ gone.”

“I had just arrived in Normandy. There was an apple orchard where our Army headquarters was tented. In the evening, I walked into the flattened town spread out around a badly bombed church. A ghostly silence covered the deserted area except for the shoveling noise of a lone man trying to uncover his house. He saw me and glared. I represented the war, which had brought ruin to his house and home.

“I picked up some of the church glass and moved on.”

The shards might have remained hidden, their stories lost to time, if not for a chance meeting. McDonald, who continued to travel the world for many years after the war, had finally settled in San Francisco, a city he admired for its boldness and verve. After serving a congregation at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, he had eased into retirement when one day he struck up a far-reaching conversation with a fellow resident at his retirement home. The topic turned to stained glass, and McDonald mentioned his unique collection. The woman knew of Le Roux’s work and reached out to her.

The Remembered Light works were completed in 2007 and put on display, first in the Presidio, before eventually making it to New Orleans’ World War II Museum, where COVID held them captive for a year. Finding a place to exhibit was sometimes difficult, Bruce McDonald says, because some museums shy away from religious exhibitions. But Remembered Light is not about religion, he says. It’s about one man’s journey through war. McDonald wants people to learn and see the connections between war and peace, as the exhibit returns home to San Francisco.

“Fred was a very articulate and educated worldly person,” Le Roux says. “At the end, I want people to have a sense of humanity, not just of religion and war. I want them to think about the impact of destruction. I’m sure people will feel the sorrow, but I want them to also feel hope.”

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When you picture a residential street in San Francisco, you probably think of a row of ornate, brightly painted Victorian houses, all lined up on a steep hill. But there is one important feature of this image that is easy to miss, although without it it would make the scene very strange. A curved bay window wrapped in the facade is a signature piece of Bay Area architecture – even if it really has nothing to do with the Bay Area.

The typical bay window is not only found in Victorians – more on that later – but is just as important for the Bay Area as fog or the Golden Gate Bridge. The style of the windows is actually older than the Bay Area. It is unclear exactly when bay windows were “invented”, but they grew in popularity during the English Renaissance and saw a boom from the early 16th to the early 17th centuries. This explains why the windows are still so common in cities around the world, with a remarkable prevalence in the UK and later New England.

The bay window that most San Franciscans think of – the one displayed on a classic Victorian building like the Painted Ladies, for example – is a particular type of two shorter windows and one longer window that converge at angles to form a “bay window.” ” to build. Tim Kelley, an advisor and conservation advocate in San Francisco, said they performed in the city in the late 1880s.

They continued to enjoy great popularity during the Victorian era when so much of the architecture was praised for its function. “You get more light when you put a bay window in, and the Victorians took advantage of that,” said Bonnie Spindler, a San Francisco-based real estate agent and “Victorian Specialist”. “At the time they were built, [residents] relied on gas lighting and the interiors were painted dark to hide the soot from the gas lights and the soot from the coal burning. “

She said this helped especially in foggy San Francisco.

The windows protruding above the building also provided additional space. “While bay windows have aesthetic (shape) and functional (natural light and views) features that add to their iconic status in San Francisco architecture past and present, there is an economic motivation for bay windows that is often overlooked,” said Steven Doctors, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of San Francisco. “… Bay windows efficiently increase the number of square meters of a building, often by protruding beyond the property line and into the air space above the public pavement. This ‘free’ space in public space increases the number of square meters of the building and thus increases its economic value or rental income for private property owners. “

Row of seven Victorian houses in central San Francisco known as Painted Ladies.

LimeWave – Inspiration To Explore / Getty Images

San Francisco is also known for preserving older homes, and much of what has been preserved has been old Edwardian and Victorian homes that have bay windows, Spindler said.

There’s also an obvious reason why bay windows are mistakenly synonymous with the Bay Area – it’s in the name. “We are the Bay Area and they are bay windows,” said Spindler. “There are many other bays, but we are probably the most famous one.”

Today bay windows are more common in San Francisco than Victorian homes, and they come in all styles and sizes. They can be found in Art Deco, marina, and even some Tudor Revival homes, although many more use an arched window that includes four or more windows to create a more rounded arch. In any case, the houses still fulfill their original intention – more light and more square meters.

Rob Thomson, president of the Victorian Alliance, said bay windows in San Francisco can also be used as a handy shortcut when determining the age of a home. “No bay (flat front) or an angled bay usually means it’s 1870s or earlier. A box shaft is associated with the 1880s, and a rounded shaft means it’s 1890s or later, ”he said. “The system isn’t perfect, and there are exceptions, but it’s a useful tool and a great way to sound smart to your friends.”

Not only are Bay Area windows quintessential, they’re so popular that they even add value to a home, Spindler said. She said that having fireplaces makes them high on people’s list of favorite features when looking to buy real estate. But there is something incredibly unique about the windows that has almost no other function. “They are really bay windows that draw your attention from the outside of the building and draw your attention from the inside of the building,” she said. “There are very few functions that migrate from the inside to the outside.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include additional information about bay windows and the age of houses.

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Basil Yaqub, of Fremont, California, visited San Francisco with his family on Saturday to celebrate the purchase of a new car.

After dinner at a restaurant, Yaqub said he parked in the city’s garage in Union Square so the kids could run around the square. This was his family’s first trip to Union Square since before the pandemic, and his children were excited.

When Yaqub returned to the garage with his wife and children, he found three broken windows on his new Maserati, which he had just bought the day before. The broken window panes chipped off the paint, and he said repairs would cost in the range of $ 20,000. The child’s desk hidden in the trunk was stolen.

“It was really an awful experience,” he told SFGATE. “I’ve lived here for 22 years and have been going to SF for years. I love it but then this.”

A family friend drove them into town and the windows of his Lamborghini were also smashed.

On June 6, 2021, windows were smashed into a car park in Union Square, San Francisco.

Basil Yaqub / Courtesy

“There were eight cars in a row with broken windows,” said Yaqub. “Our two cars and six others. It was a nice car. It is the first time in our lives that we have spent money on a beautiful car. I wouldn’t be so sad if it was a normal car life. “

Yaqub took his family to an Uber home and drove in his car covered with broken glass.

Smashed car windows are a well-known scene in San Francisco, and KGO, who first reported the story, pointed out that Yaqub “represents one of 6,911 other car break-ins cases reported across the city this year, just a decrease from one percent is “. from that time last year. “

The city operates 22 parking garages. The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency confirmed that security is reduced as occupancy is only 40% of pre-pandemic levels.

“Out of necessity, we had to prioritize those employees who provide the most comprehensive services to our workshops,” SFMTA said in a statement. “Security is not being replaced, but currently responsibility has shifted to other employees who maintain our parking facilities. We are focused on tracking vehicle intrusion metrics on a daily and weekly basis and have the ability to provide additional security.” if necessary, with a one-day notice period. It is important to note that the security contracts of our car park operators are not being terminated, but are being put on hold. Break-ins into urban garages remain minimal. “

According to SFMTA, the city’s garages with new lighting, signposts, acoustic alarms, cameras, gate arms and payment machines with digital intercoms are safer than ever.

“In addition, there is a completely new parking management system behind the scenes and a 24/7 command center that is connected to every machine,” said SFMTA.

The San Francisco police were not immediately available for comment.

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NEW YORK – Ruth Westheimer was 10 years old in 1939 when she boarded a train with 300 other Jewish children that was leaving Germany. She brought a doll, a favorite doll named Matilda. But a younger child was crying inconsolably, so Westheimer gave the little girl her doll. Because she needed it more, she says.

Today Dr. Ruth, America’s Favorite Sex Therapist, 88 years old. She lives in a New York apartment full of books, photos and degrees.

And dollhouses.

Space for miniature space lovingly arranged by liver-stained hands. They give her joy and comfort and testify to the innocence she lost so long ago.

Westheimer was in her late 60s and already a celebrity when a friend started building dollhouses in her home. She asked if she could have one. Now she has two, plus several more square “rooms” in bookcases and a collection of other boxes and tissue holders that also serve as dollhouses.

She is demanding about their content. They are Jewish houses with menora and other religious symbols. The dolls and furniture are from England – most of them bought on trips to London and Europe – and were made between the First and Second World Wars. “I’m only interested in the good years,” she says during an interview in her apartment in Washington Heights.

“That brings luck,” she says, proudly holding up a tiny chimney sweep figure in a doll’s house near the apartment entrance. “You can touch it!”

The faces of her dolls are expressive and wise, she explains. “Not like the Barbie doll,” she insists. “Because you can’t tell a Barbie doll what it’s about. She has a stupid face. She’s very fashionable – lots of clothes – but you can’t tell her about your problems. You can tell these people your problems. “

Westheimer, who will speak about her collection at the museum’s dollhouse exhibition on December 5 at the National Building Museum in Washington, has four grandchildren. But she says the houses were never meant for her. These are yours.

Because what they give her most of all is control. “I wasn’t in control of my life,” she says. “But I’m in control of it.”

Karola Ruth Siegel was an only child. Her parents were Orthodox Jews from the lower middle class in Frankfurt. But her childhood was enchanted. She remembers having roller skates, strollers, 13 dolls, and the undivided attention of her paternal grandmother.

Every Friday her father, a salesman, took her to have ice cream and then to the temple. Again and again he would impress upon her the value of education. “The most important thing for my father was studying,” she says. “Because nobody can take that away from you.”

She remembers how a neighbor warned in autumn 1938 that she had to leave Germany. Her parents tried to protect her from worry, but “I just knew terrible things were happening,” she says.

After the Broken Glass Night – she doesn’t use the word “Kristallnacht” because it sounds too beautiful and noble – Nazis came to the door of their apartment on the first floor. Westheimer watched from the window as the men marched their father to a covered truck. Before climbing in, he turned to look at his daughter. She waved and he waved back. Then he smiled.

“Because he didn’t want me to cry,” she says.

Weeks later, a postcard came from her father who was in a labor camp. It said she should get on a Kindertransport – a train that saves Jewish children from the Nazis.

“That was the only way he could leave the labor camp and return to Frankfurt,” she recalls. “So I didn’t have a choice.”

Frightened and sad, she hugged her mother and was loaded onto the train in January 1939. As he drove out of the train station, she began to lead the other crying children in familiar songs. The text that stuck in her mind today is: “God does not sleep … no sleep.”

She knew that she had to distract the children from their tears, she says, “because I remembered my father turning around and smiling.”

Most of the Kindertransport passengers were on their way to the UK, but she went to Switzerland, where she ended up with 50 others in a children’s home that became an orphanage.

She exchanged letters with her parents for almost two years. She knew they had both ended up in a ghetto in Poland. But then the letters stopped.

Only a few years later did she find out with certainty that her father had died in Auschwitz. Her mother was listed as “missing”. Disappeared.

The orphanage, she says, is “a good place”, except that girls are not allowed to go to school. But she had a friend who went to high school in a neighboring village, so every night she co-opts his books and taught herself history and English.

At 17, after the war ended, Westheimer moved to Palestine to help build a Jewish state. She worked in a kibbutz for a while, then moved to Jerusalem and joined the Haganah, a Jewish defense organization. Westheimer, six feet tall and full of energy, trained as a sniper. However, a few months after her service, a grenade broke through the girls’ dormitory during the Israeli War of Independence, severely injuring both of her legs.

She trained as a kindergarten teacher, met a man and moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. When her husband wanted to return to Israel, they divorced but remained good friends.

In 1956 she came to the United States to look for an uncle who had survived the war and moved to San Francisco. “I wanted to see if he was as small as me,” she laughs.

She settled in Washington Heights, which became an enclave for many German-Jewish refugees. She remarried, had a daughter, and divorced when her second husband returned to Europe.

Westheimer had long dreamed of studying medicine, but without a science background that seemed impossible. So she got a public health research position at Columbia University and then became a project manager at Planned Parenthood. There she met the 2,000 women who were to do their doctoral thesis on the subject of contraception.

After a few years as a single mother, she met Fred Westheimer, a telecommunications engineer, to whom she was married for almost 38 years. He adopted their daughter and they had a son together.

Westheimer received his PhD in education from Columbia University with a focus on sex education and studied with Helen Singer Kaplan, a pioneer in the field of sex therapy. In 1980 she was tapped by local radio producers in New York to do a short weekly section answering the listeners’ most private questions. Her then-controversial show grew to two hours as audiences reacted to her outspoken conversations about erections and orgasms. Her strong German accent and disrespectful humor made her an icon of the time.

She has published 40 books, still teaches at Columbia, and speaks all over the world. She is out and about almost every evening, in the theater, at the opera or at a charitable event. She has a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and is planning new projects in the works. She has no intention of slowing down because she survived and continues to survive. “I lived while 1 1/2 million Jewish children died,” she says. “So it is my duty to fix the world.”

Dr. Ruth has been a widow for almost 20 years, and during this time her apartment, which she has lived in for five decades, is full of dolls and figures.

A doll stands on a side table that looks so much like the one given away – shining eyes, springy curls and delicate turtles embroidered on the white dress. It even has the same turtle badge on its back. Westheimer identifies with the turtle – a creature that carries its home on its back but has to stick its neck out to get on in life. She has had turtle figurines from all over the world, so many that her coffee table has to be moved to make room for a small glass of water.

Her parents and grandmother “would have been very happy to see what happened to me,” she says. And she, too, is happy, remembers the joy of her early childhood and the achievements of her life.

The darkness in which it does not linger. “But I don’t forget either,” she says.

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