Transamerica Pyramid

This guide to the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco starts with what stood here before it: the Montgomery Block, a saloon-anchored building where Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce drank, torn down in 1959. It follows architect William Pereira's tapering design a decade later and the uproar it caused, from mocking dunce hats to a planning director calling it inhuman. Look for the pocket park of redwoods, hauled in from the Santa Cruz mountains, ringing the tower's base.