Ferry Building

This guide to the Ferry Building in San Francisco starts with a puzzle: for thirty years a double-decker freeway ran across its front, and only its clock tower still showed above the concrete deck. From there it goes back to 1898, when the building was one of the busiest terminals on earth, second only to London's Charing Cross Station, and to the 1906 earthquake it survived nearly untouched while fire consumed the city around it. You'll hear how the bridges emptied the ferries out and how the freeway rose to bury the hall for decades. Look up at the clock tower as you listen; it watched all of it happen.