What's this building????

Forgive me for posting this here, being a travel website and all, but here goes...

When traveling on the F-Market Streetcar, one can see this rather imposing building sitting at the corner of Market and Buchanan. It%26#39;s surrounded by chain link fence and there are some vintage trolleys stationed just down a small hill. Any thoughts?

What's this building????

Are you talking about the U.S. Mint? That%26#39;s the big stone building occupying a full block on top of the hill.

usmint.gov/about_the_mint/…

If this is the place you mean, it was used for minting regular U.S. coins until maybe the 1960s. Once in a blue moon you see an old copper penny with ';S'; on the front (Lincoln head side) meaning it was minted here.

It%26#39;s now used for minting limited edition collector sets.

It%26#39;s a high-security place (duh) and is not open for tours, although they did have an open house maybe 10 years ago. I was there a few times for professional reasons. Aside from the business that brought me there, it was interesting to see the operation. I was told then that workers were searched coming and going, wore special clothing at work, and had to shower before leaving, and the showers had special drains to catch any metal residue they might be carrying, either deliberately or unwittingly. Even as a badge-carrying representative of another government agency, with an escort every second I was there, I also had to go through a detector on the way out, after shedding my watch, jewelry, belt buckle, keys, and other metal items, anything electronic, and shoes.

The architectural design is Modern Egyptian Revival. The outside looks like granite, although I%26#39;m not positive. The interior looks like King Tut could RIP in it; too bad the public will never see it. There is a lot of dark, majestic marble, gold accents like you find in 1930s bank buildings. Little natural light comes in, and it actually does look and feel as somber as a tomb because there isn%26#39;t any real typical business activity.

The hill is serpentine, the official California state (non-metallic) mineral. Serpentine is common in S.F.; you see a lot near the Bay and the ocean, around Potrero Hill and many other places. It%26#39;s a pretty gray-greenish color and is a natural source of asbestos, so when demolition or construction happens in serpentine areas, environmental safety measures are needed.

What's this building????

Thanks, Frisco!

I guess my sense of where things are is still in need of some refining. For some reason I had the idea that there wasn%26#39;t a mint in San Francisco any longer, with the rehabbing of the plaza at the Old Mint. Obviously they%26#39;re separate structures.

The Mint that is in the news a lot these days is the Old Mint at 5th and Mission. It dates from after the Gold Rush, when there was so much gold floating trough S.F. that the Federal government needed a way to turn it into legal tender, so a mint was hurriedly built downtown. It was later improved and became the majestic Greek Revival edifice that is there now. It survived the 1906 earthquake/fire, along with the Post Office two blocks away. They obviously date from the same neo-classical school of architecture. But the Old Mint was too small and outdated, so the New Mint (the one on Market) replaced it.

In my childhood, there was a historic museum in the Old Mint, run by the U.S%26gt; Treasury Dept. with exhibits about the Gold Rush, money in California, how mints work, etc. You could also buy collectors%26#39; coins there and watch them being struck on the antique machinery. That closed some years ago and the building has been vacant since, but now there are some plans for the City to do something exciting (I hope it will be exciting).