Libeskind’s ‘baby’ born as Jewish museum breaks ground in S.F.

It's time — time for all the schematics and models and permits to give way to a real, brick-and-mortar structure. It's time for shovels to hit the ground. It's time to turn a blueprint into a blue building.

"This is the moment the adrenaline rushes to your brain," says architect Daniel Libeskind.

"Everything you did in abstract is becoming real. There's the steel and the crane and every bolt and this is what architecture is all about — constructing something."

It was the morning of Wednesday, July 19 and Libeskind was perhaps even a little more frenetic than usual. In less than an hour San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom would declare it "Contemporary Jewish Museum Groundbreaking Day," marking a major milestone in the museum's serpentine path from concept to reality.

"It's like the birth of a child," said Libeskind, a father of three (children, that is). "And no matter how they grow up, they're always your kids."

The gestation period for Libeskind's latest-born had been a bit long. But that era is over. It came to a close on a gloriously sunny (and sweaty) day when, according to CJM Executive Director Connie Wolf, busy work crews actually had to take time off to accommodate the groundbreaking celebration.

Newsom described the ceremony as proof of the maxim that "God's delays are not God's denials. It took 14 long years for us to be here today and hundreds of meetings in my office and [Willie] Brown's and probably even Frank Jordan and Art Agnos and maybe George Christopher," said the mayor to laughter and applause from the roughly 750 members of the audience.

"I'm happy to be with you today and I hope to be here with the same [job] title at the ribbon-cutting in 2008."

The design construction crews are turning into a reality is actually Libeskind's second; he was forced to scale back his larger and costlier original due to monetary shortfalls. But "value engineering" is a Libeskind specialty (he trimmed $500 million off his winning design for the World Trade Center memorial). Redesigning the CJM was a challenge — "you can't just cut a piece off" — but only a "prima donna" would have walked away from it.

Museum board president Roselyne "Cissie" Swig told the crowd the CJM has amassed 78 percent of its $77 million fundraising goal — nearly $61 million. The museum, she feels, will be "the jewel in our cultural crown."

The struggles in transforming the CJM from a wisp of an idea to a glorious red brick and blue steel structure have been a part of life — and the museum itself, based around symbolic evocations of the Hebrew word "chai," is a celebration of life.

And the architect is thrilled with the current plan. He describes it as "much more clarified" than the original — "it went through the test of fire, which is the ultimate test of architecture." He's created a tighter, more efficient building he feels is unlike any other in the world.

He also sees the CJM as a "quintessentially Jewish building" and, what's more, deeply evocative of the history of San Francisco's Jews: It's a unique structure with its own story to tell, but it's but one component of a thriving, pluralistic and multicultural part of the city, just like the population it will serve.

Libeskind habitually dresses in black from head to toe, but he obviously knows a bit about matching colors. The deep blue steel he's chosen for the museum will go brilliantly with the faded red bricks of the power station. But it wasn't just color coordination that led him to create the striking, angular blue steel edifice.

"Blue is the color of Israel. And it is not a coincidence the flag of Israel is blue. Blue is the sky, the water, the future. It is a mysterious and beautiful color."

Apart from its unique color, the museum's unorthodox shape allows for "many experiences — you can't just see it once."

The CJM won't just be a museum that looks different than other facilities, it thinks differently too — even non-paying pedestrians, ranging from families on vacation to office workers on their lunch breaks, will get a glimpse of the treasures within, and it won't cost them a penny. Large windows opening onto Yerba Buena Plaza will be stocked with works of art for all to see.

"That's a mitzvah to the public," says Libeskind with a smile.

The day of the groundbreaking was one of the picture-perfect sunny affairs truly appreciated by wind-blown San Franciscans. Under the noonday sun, the brick nave and buttresses of neighboring St. Patrick's Church and the distinctive sundial-like tower of the Museum of Modern Art gleamed along with the van-sized blue steel model, a taste of what's to come.

"This is not just any building," Libeskind told the scorched and fan-waving crowd. "As the child of Holocaust survivors, I have built several museums dealing with the darkness of history, man's inhumanity to man. Here we have the occasion to deal with joy and a celebration of life."