Religion: San Francisco Skyscraper-Church

When city land becomes too expensive to build churches upon, a solution is to combine churches and skyscrapers. The Chicago Temple (First Methodist Episcopal Church plus offices, stores) and Manhattan's Broadway Temple (Methodist Episcopal Church plus apartment houses, hotel, stores) are examples. San Franciscans now have a brand new 30-story pyramidal skyscraper-church-hotel to admire —the William Taylor Hotel and Temple Methodist Episcopal Church, on the busy corner of McAllister and Leavenworth Streets.

A greystone tower with a suggestion of Gothic ornament, it is named for Forty-Niner William ("California") Taylor who chose the longest...