Quick answer
The de Young Museum in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park opened its current building on October 15, 2005, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and clad in 163,000 square feet of copper meant to oxidize green. The museum began in 1895 in a building from the Midwinter Exposition, and its free Hamon Observation Tower is the tallest point in the park.
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Copper
Look at the outside before you buy a ticket. The museum opened on October 15, 2005, wrapped in 163,118 square feet of perforated, dimpled copper. The building started the color of a penny. It is oxidizing now, slowly turning the green of the eucalyptus trees around it, and it will keep changing for years — every rain and every foggy afternoon adds a layer. Only a few things survived from the old museum: the sphinxes by the pool, the original palm trees, and the Pool of Enchantment itself. Everything else is new, and designed to age.
Two Earthquakes
The de Young began as the Fine Arts Building of the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition, the only permanent building of that fair, and opened as a public museum on March 23, 1895. M.H. de Young, cofounder of the San Francisco Chronicle, chaired the committee that put the fair together, and in 1921 the museum took his name. The 1906 earthquake damaged the building; the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake did far worse. The museum closed on December 31, 2000, and Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architects, won the competition to rebuild. Their design can move up to three feet during a quake on ball-bearing sliding plates, absorbing the shaking instead of fighting it.
The Free Tower
The best thing in the museum is outside the ticket line. The Hamon Observation Tower rises 144 feet above the park, the tallest point in Golden Gate Park, and the elevator to the ninth floor is free. The deck carries a giant satellite map of the city underfoot and a 360-degree view that takes in the Pacific, the Marin Headlands, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the living roof of the California Academy of Sciences next door. Ride it up on a clear late afternoon, watch the light move across the park, and then decide if you want to buy a ticket at all.