The Canessa Building, built in the late 1800s and located at 708 Montgomery, is an official San Francisco landmark.

Canessa once housed printing presses and gas lights, and nearby, on Sansome Street, a bustling produce market district shook the neighborhood into pre-dawn life.

Following the 1906 earthquake, most of the buildings on the 700 block of Montgomery looked like stage-sets from a wild western movie. The second story of Canessa was destroyed but soon rebuilt.

In 1925, sculptor Ralph Stackpole and painter Timothy Wulff began work to turn the buildings at 716-718-720 Montgomery into artists' studios. For the next 35 years, artists, including Diego Rivera, William Gerstle, Caroline Martin and Ruth Cravath, sculpted and painted in the "Ship Building," so-named because a ship's hull -- historically thought to be the Georgian -- is incorporated in the building.

Black Cat Cafe was Canessa’s next door neighbor from the 1930s to the1960s.

Though many of the original buildings in this area did not survive the era of high-and-higher architecture, the diminutive gem known as Canessa has. Today, the old brick building still glows with light and life and is home to an art gallery and several creative professionals and small businesses.