October is a good month in California, I was reminded recently, as I returned there for a week to that gorgeous California autumn weather, from San Francisco in the north to Los Angeles in the south. As always, it was exciting and full of new experiences, and, as always, the East Coast felt far away.

When I lived in San Francisco some time ago, on the top floor of a small house overlooking the Golden Gate Park, I could observe the new de Young Museum in the park being built, slowly raising itself above the eucalyptus trees. Today it is finished, a magnificent building clad in copper with a 45 meter high twisted tower, from which, on the ninth floor, visitors have maybe the best of views out over San Francisco and its hills, parks, and houses, down to the Pacific Ocean in the west, up to the Golden Gate Bridge’s red towers in the north, Twin Peaks to the south, and downtown with its Transamerica pyramid to the east.

The architects, Swiss Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and the local firm Fong & Chan, had no easy task in the earthquake-prone city. But the result is grand and the location is without comparison. The copper exterior is expected over time to oxidize and turn greener in tone, thus blending in with the park’s vast greenery.

The Golden Gate Park is the most beautiful of America’s urban parks, full of that special smell from its eucalyptus trees and the winds from the Pacific. The de Young Museum changes nothing of that. In fact, it adds to its wonders and magic.