Frederick Herman Meyer

Frederick Herman Meyer (1876 – 1961) was a prominent San Francisco-based architect, born on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco on June 26, 1876. Meyer had no formal architectural training, and instead learned his skills as an apprentice, starting out as a draftsman in 1896, but quickly becoming a partner with Victorian-era architect Samuel Newsom.

He, working alone or with partners, is credited with a number of prominent buildings in San Francisco, of which perhaps the most well-known, at least for those of us from the East Bay, is the Auditorium on the south side of the SF Civic Center, designed by Meyer along with John Galen Howard, and John Reid, Jr. This Auditorium, which opened in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, was first called the Exposition Auditorium, is now known as the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. and is where the Golden State Warriors played from 1964-1966. In Oakland, he is credited (along with Walter Reed) with designing the Key System Building.

Meyer died on March 6, 1961 in Marin General Hospital after a long illness. He had a namesake working in the Bay Area, another Frederick H. Meyer, founder of what is now the California College of the Arts in 1907. This other Meyer had been born in Hamelin, Germany in 1872. Both had fathers or uncles who were cabinetmakers. The older Meyer had died exactly two months earlier, on January 6, 1961. Apparently the SF Examiner obituary of architect Meyer published on March 7, 1961 managed to confuse the accomplishments of the two and had to be corrected the following day!