place

Room 641A

AT&T buildingsGeorge W. Bush administration controversiesHistory of cryptographyIndividual roomsLocations in the history of espionage
National Security Agency facilitiesOrganizations based in San FranciscoPrivacy in the United StatesPrivacy of telecommunicationsSignals intelligenceUse mdy dates from March 2021
Room 641A exterior
Room 641A exterior

Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency, as part of its warrantless surveillance program as authorized by the Patriot Act. The facility commenced operations in 2003 and its purpose was publicly revealed in 2006.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Room 641A (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Room 641A
611 Folsom Street Plaza, San Francisco

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Room 641AContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 37.785277777778 ° E -122.39666666667 °
placeShow on map

Address

611 Folsom Street Plaza

611 Folsom Street Plaza
San Francisco
California, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Room 641A exterior
Room 641A exterior
Share experience

Nearby Places

222 Second Street
222 Second Street

222 Second Street is a 370-foot (110 m) office skyscraper in the South of Market District of San Francisco, California. It is under lease by social networking company LinkedIn (headquartered in nearby Sunnyvale). Developed by Tishman Speyer and designed by Thomas Phifer, the high rise was planned to provide 450,209 square feet (41,825.8 m2) of office space, 2,209 square feet (205.2 m2) of ground floor retail, and 8,600 square feet (800 m2) of open space accessible to the public, at the southern corner of Second and Howard Streets. Construction began in August 2013, still without a tenant on hand.In April 2014, LinkedIn announced it was leasing the building for an undisclosed sum, to accommodate up to 2,500 of its employees, with the lease covering 10 years. The goal was to join all of its San Francisco based staff (1,250 as of January 2016) in one building, bring sales and marketing employees together with the research and development team.The building was topped-out in August 2014 and opened in March 2016, with LinkedIn staff moving in in stages until 2017.The ground floor is open to the public during work hours, as a privately owned public space. It features three large artworks by Frank Stella, in accordance with the developers' public art proposal to the city Planning Commission, with the purchase price of $1 million matching 1% of the total "construction hard costs".The San Francisco Chronicle's architecture critic John King characterized the building as "severe yet sleek" and expressed appreciation for the arrangement of the "panes of overlapping glass 6 feet wide and 13 feet high [that] cover a form that begins as a squat 16-story rectangle and concludes as a 10-story square. On the lower four stories the shingled pattern fans to the right; the fifth floor panels are flat, side by side, and then the shingles resume in reverse, flipping tightly to the left. The upper floors reverse the pattern yet again." However, while acknowledging their appeal in certain light situations ("a large-scale shuffle of vivid reflections"), King criticized their dark color (evoking a "dull gloom" on cloudy days). And he chastised the building - "designed and built by New Yorkers" - as being aesthetically out of place on Second Street, "an alien presence in a well-established setting where other recent buildings have done their best to add to the ambiance".

Foundry Square
Foundry Square

Foundry Square is a complex of four architecturally-linked, 10-story mid-rise buildings located at Howard and First Streets near the Transbay Transit Center in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, California. Each of the four buildings stands on a different corner of the street.Each building is a mixed-use structure. The four structures combined provide a total interior area of 1,200,000 square feet (110,000 m2). The design team included STUDIOS Architecture, Jim Jennings Architecture, Page & Turnbull, Webcor Builders, and landscape architect SWA Group. The developer was Wilson Equity Office (now Wilson Meany). The Glazing Contractor used on these buildings was AGA (Architectural Glass and Aluminum). Current tenants include the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, STUDIOS Architecture, the headquarters of Slack, and the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center.The project's first phase, Foundry Square II (405 Howard Street) and Foundry Square IV (500 Howard Street), was completed in 2003. The third building, Foundry Square I (400 Howard Street), was completed in 2007. In April 2012, Tishman Speyer acquired the entitlements to the final building, Foundry Square III (505 Howard Street), from Wilson Meany Sullivan, and broke ground later that year. Foundry Square III was completed in April 2014.The 1,000 square feet (93 m2) contained within Foundry Square's four open corners form a larger, unified public square. Each building's 200-foot (61 m) dual-glaze glass walls frame the square, establishing an arcade that defines the transition between interior building space and public exterior spaces. The four corners of the intersection are integrated by the use of public art and sculpture (such as Richard Deutsch's "Time Signature" stainless steel sculpture), tree bosques, ground-floor cafes, and over-scaled pots. The project earned SWA Group the ASLA Northern California Chapter Merit Award in 2006.As of May 2023, during what the San Francisco Chronicle described as "Downtown San Francisco['s] worst office vacancy crisis on record," Foundry Square IV (500 Howard Street) had a vacancy rate of 95.4% and Foundry Square III (505 Howard Street) had a vacancy rate of 97.6%, compared to 1.6% for Foundry Square II (405 Howard Street) and 36.9 % for Foundry Square I (400 Howard Street).