See that building over there, it's really tall, kind of imposing, and all alone in front of the Bay Bridge? It's called One Rincon Hill, and it is an outlier in the skyline of San Francisco.



Rincon Hill the neighborhood covers a small hill south of market next to the freeway and extends into the newly created UCSF Mission Bay area, or "Dogpatch" neighborhood. In the late 1800s Rincon Hill was covered with mansions sporting views of the bay. South Park was established as a gated park, available only to the lucky few granted keys.

A little before 1900 a channel was built through Rincon Hill as a shortcut from the waterfront to downtown, but wasn't much used and prompted all the high class inhabitants to move when it didn't increase property values like it was intended to. After this planning disaster, Rincon Hill faded into obscurity, used for for industrial buildings, then covered up completely by the construction of the Bay Bridge, freeway ramps connecting the Transbay Terminal to the Bay Bridge, and the raised Embarcadero Freeway. After the 1989 earthquake Rincon Hill emerged once more as an attractive bit of land for building, returning to the idea of providing housing with amazing views to rich tenants. One Rincon Hill became the first completely residential skyscraper of San Francisco.



But then the economy went to hell and no one needed shiny new high priced condos. So building slowed, and that's why the construction of sister tower Rincon Hill North was indefinitely put on hold. For now, One Rincon Hill stands all alone at the end of the city, waiting for more super huge buildings to shoot up into the sky.

I don't have much to offer in terms of mathematical evidence of its irregularity, only that 1) it is 641 feet tall, the fifth tallest building in San Francisco, which is much, much taller than the average building in San Francisco, and 2) it's really far away from all the other skyscrapers. If 525 Market is about the center of the skyscrapers, the scattering of other skyscrapers stops at a radius of about 0.3 miles. But 525 Market to 1 Rincon Hill is 0.5 miles, almost twice the distance.

A map plotting the 43 tallest buildings in San Francisco:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&t=h&hl=en&msa=0&msid=115236058312232378710.00046ea785f78ab73d125&z=15



The pink one is One Rincon Hill, the green ones are buildings completed in the last decade. Most of those are along Mission street, and more are to come (like the Transbay Terminal).

I put this statistical anomaly on display in an exhibit at the top of the hill of Dolores Park. Orange construction fencing hangs between two trees, framing the view of One Rincon Hill. A paper plaque describes the irregularity of the skyscraper and mentions that other exhibits in the museum of statistical anomalies may be found at this here website. By the way, fixing things to trees is difficult, especially at one in the morning when the wind is blowing madly and nothing sticks to tree trunks. Only one person asked me what I was doing and then said he called One Rincon Hill "the space heater building" because it looks like a giant space heater.



Some haikus:

building stagnates in
a lacking economy,
lone one rincon hill

on an otherwise
approximately normal
high city skyline.