Salesforce Park and Skyward Botanical Garden: The Rooftop Forest

Why is it significant?

Step into the glass outdoor gondola or elevator off Mission Street and ascend seventy feet into the sky to enter Salesforce Park, a breathtaking five-acre botanical park suspended four blocks long atop the Transbay Transit Center.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step into the glass outdoor gondola or elevator off Mission Street and ascend seventy feet into the sky to enter Salesforce Park, a breathtaking five-acre botanical park suspended four blocks long atop the Transbay Transit Center. Opened in August 2018, this aerial public commons designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli represents a revolutionary integration of public transit infrastructure and ecological landscape design. Strolling along the continuous half-mile walking loop, you are surrounded by over sixteen thousand plants and six hundred trees from ecosystems across the globe, floating effortlessly above the city streets.

Walk along the pedestrian boardwalk to explore thirteen distinct botanical garden rooms, including a prehistoric garden filled with ancient tree ferns, a cloud forest grove, an Australian garden blooming with banksias and bottle brushes, and a native California oak meadow. At the center of the park lies the 'Bus Jet Fountain', an interactive water sculpture designed by Ned Kahn. As transit buses rumble through the subterranean bus bays seventy feet below your feet, acoustic sensors trigger fifty-seven water jets that dance across a reflecting pool in real-time response to bus traffic.

Look upward at the towering spire of Salesforce Tower, rising one thousand seventy feet directly adjacent to the park as the tallest skyscraper in San Francisco. The tower and park share a sophisticated greywater recycling system, reducing municipal water consumption by thousands of gallons daily. Every surrounding viewpoint, historic brick facade, and open-air plaza tells an essential chapter of California's ongoing transformation from a rugged frontier town into a world-renowned Pacific metropolis. Every surrounding viewpoint, historic brick facade, and open-air plaza tells an essential chapter of California's ongoing transformation from a rugged frontier town into a world-renowned Pacific metropolis.

Find a quiet teak bench among the flowering redwoods to watch hummingbirds and bumblebees pollinating blossoms seventy feet above the traffic.

Descend the eastern escalator to Main Street and stroll two blocks toward Howard Street.