The proposed The Poets Plaza is envisioned as a simple piazza honoring Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the community of North Beach.
It will be located on a portion of Vallejo Street between Columbus and Grant Avenue and will be framed by two historic San Francisco landmarks, The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi built in 1859 and Caffe Trieste which opened it doors in 1956 to become the first espresso coffee house on the West Coast.
The Poets Plaza will become a garden of wishes, a garden of dreams, and a place to ponder, reflect and to meet new and old friends over a cup of cappuccino.
Much like a village square, or a pocket park, the new plazza is envisioned as a social landscape or a sense of place, as well as a beautiful architectural landscape that will incorporate a new paved surface of green and white marble bands that are inspired by Italy’s magnificent cathedrals in Florence and Siena. The alternating marble bands are intended to be timeless and will extend from the face of Saint Francis to the face of Café Trieste are envisioned as a symbolic bridge that will connect and unite the history of these remarkable landmarks to the future of North Beach.
The new plazza will serve as a venue that will unite and seam artistic and neighborhood narratives together to form a new community center for North Beach. This extraordinary setting will become a magical site that visitors around the world will visit and discover. It will be a new place to meet others by chance. It will become a new place to propose, a new place to say, “Yes” or “Yikes, not this time”. It will become a happening to recite poetry and to listen to tragic poets rap, gossip and shout, Peace to the World.
It will become North Beach’s new outdoor living room where one can listen to opera on Saturdays from the windows of Café Trieste and a place to linger to Sunday concerts from the steps of the National Shrine.
The proposed design for The Poets Plaza documents the typology of its setting and context. It is an attempt to renegotiate our history with our future rather than imposing a language distant from its North Beach context. The design is kept simple and avoids visual noise or architectural distractions as it is envisioned as a sacred place.
It incorporates two simple benches, one to watch the sunrise and one to watch the sun set. It will have new deciduous shade trees, soft scented landscape, a small sheet of water to symbolize purity and to reflect the sky and viewer.
The Poets Plaza will be simply inspirational and a luminous magnet that will guide those who live in our hood and those “who unfortunately, do not, to hang out in North Beach’s new urban oasis. — Dennis Q. Sullivan, April 14, 2008
