Castro & Market: A History of Change

The intersection of Castro & Market Streets has undergone transformations over the course of history (see photo gallery below).

This current effort to reimagine HMP represents the continuation of a decades-long series of attempts to create an inspirational memorial to Harvey Milk at the intersection of Castro and Market Streets, as well as a broader effort to upgrade the intersection. These efforts include: Castro Area Planning + Action, (1997); Harvey Milk Memorial Design Competition (2000-2006); Upper Market Community Plan (2008); and Upper Market Safety Project (2014). The separate SFMTA-led Castro Station Accessibility Improvements—though they do not address the memorial component of this Project—constitute the most intensive effort to improve the site to date. The SFMTA project is scheduled to begin in late 2021/early 2022.

Below are some key moments in the evolution of the iconic intersection.

Castro Area Planning + Action (CAPA)

1997

Castro Area Planning + Action (CAPA) was formed to develop a long-term plan for the Castro neighborhood and to propose solutions synthesizing design, engineering, art, and commerce. The process started by looking at the neighborhood as a whole system including commercial development, transportation, community institutions, housing, and open space. After several community forums and a two-day long planning workshop, a plan emerged that put Castro Street and the Plaza in the context of the whole neighborhood and–indeed of the whole city. In the plan, Harvey Milk Plaza is seen as a pivotal location in the neighborhood– a link between a more intensely developed Market Street and the neighborhood scale of Castro Street, as well as a major Civic space terminating the main street of the city. Additionally, CAPA found that Harvey Milk Plaza should be developed into an important civic space as a memorial to the man who for many is the epitome of the Castro district, and as the center of a kind of activism that makes the community so strong in San Francisco.

Harvey Milk Memorial Design Competition

2000–2006

The city-sponsored Milk Plaza redesign competition, which asked architects for ideas on how to transform the forlorn transit square into a festive public meeting space, drew more than 120 entries from around the world. Grand prize winners Christian Werthmann and Heidi Sokolowsky were among five winners chosen by a jury of design experts including professors at Harvard, Princeton and the University of California at Berkeley. Werthmann’s entry, with became known as the “Pink Cloud” emerged as the most memorable of the entries and in 2006, there were exploratory studies done to study the possibility of executing the artwork. Unfortunately the wind loads at the intersection made the formation of stationary clouds over the intersection through a system of water jets and colored lights technically infeasible.

Reimagining Harvey Milk Plaza: A Design Competition

2017

In collaboration with SFMTA’s accessibility and accessibility upgrades project, FHMP teamed with AIASF to conduct a design competition to reimagine Harvey Milk Plaza as a public gathering space that honors Harvey Milk and the recognizes the Castro’s importance in the LGBT civil rights movement. In January 2017, two community visioning meetings were held back to kick-off this redesign effort.

Jan 2017 Community Meetings

The input from these community meetings were folded into the design brief and in Spring 2017, the design competition was launched. Below is an inspirational video produced to launch the competition:

In the summer, three finalists were selected and then the public was invited to weighed in once again. Overwhelmingly the public preferred the entry from the San Francisco office of Perkins Eastman. On October 31, 2017, the design team led by Perkins Eastman was selected as the winner of the design competition and was engaged by FHMP to produce a schematic design for the planned improvements to be coordinated with the SFMTA project, which was moving along on a separate timeline.

During the subsequent schematic design process, four more community meetings were held:

Jan 2018 Community Meeting

Mar 2018 Community Meeting

Apr 2018 Community Meeting

May 2018 Community Meeting

A ‘Next Generation’ Memorial

2021

In February 2021, the Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza announced the selection of local design firm SWA to reimagine and redesign Harvey Milk Plaza, an important initial investment by FHMP made possible by a $1M state grant secured in 2019 intended to “support construction of LGBTQ space in Harvey Milk Plaza.” The selection of SWA comes after a robust proposal process that included inviting 17 design firms to submit proposals, and interviewing four shortlisted firms.

“Friends and SWA have already begun initial discussions around creating an unconventional and inclusive design process so these qualities of Harvey Milk and his legacy are inherently part of the design that is produced,” explained Brian Springfield, Interim Executive Director for FHMP. “Throughout this process, we have heard from the community that they want a ‘next generation’ memorial as unique and unconventional as Harvey himself. Now that SWA is on board, we are anxious to re-engage with the public to explore what's possible to honor Harvey Milk in a way that draws attention to the ongoing activism around issues of social justice, which Harvey championed during his lifetime. The memorial will be alive with Harvey’s politics including his call to others to get involved."

The Harvey Milk Plaza project will be undertaken by SWA’s Sausalito and San Francisco studios. The firm, which practices landscape architecture and urban design from a network of eight studios worldwide, has produced significant high-profile memorial projects, including the Sandy Hook Memorial in Newtown, CT; the Harry Truman Memorial at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, MO; and the Grand Candela Memorial, dedicated to the victims of the mass shooting in El Paso, TX.

SWA will lead a highly accomplished Bay Area team that shares their desire for an inclusive, pragmatic, and energetic design process. The team includes Civic Edge, an engagement firm who has cultivated partnerships with numerous SF agencies; Volume Inc., a creative agency known for their skill in leveraging visual communication and experience-based design to tell the story of a place; Peoples Associates Structural Engineers and Telamon Engineering (Engineer of Record), both of whom bring expert technical knowledge; and WSP, who will provide lighting design that balances safety, security, and sustainability needs with an artistic touch. The team brings the necessary creativity, vision, and experience both to realize bold and unconventional ideas and to ensure a successfully built project.

Photo Gallery