San Francisco

Population: 712,800; metro 3.3 million

Altitude: 929 ft

The first permanent European settlement here was established in 1776, when the presidio (a Spanish military post) was begun at the end of the peninsula. During that same year the Franciscan Fathers founded the Mission San Francisco de Asis, and between these two places sprang up a place known as Yerba Buena (Good Herb), which San Francisco was known as until 1835. The area transferred from Spanish to Mexican authority in 1821, when Mexico won its independence.

In June of 1846 the famous Bear Flag Rebellion took place against Mexican rule. the Californians, fighting under the emblem that was suppose to represent a grizzly bear (but mistaken by the Mexicans as a hog) won their struggle and established the California Republic. The Republic was short lived - 26 days, to be exact - and the United States absorbed California.

Until 1848 the village had fewer than 100 inhabitants. Then gold was discovered in the American River near Sutter's Mill, and San Francisco's population rapidly increased to well over 25,000 in two years; by the fall of 1849 gold seekers continued to pour into the city, setting up makeshift tents and shanties. It was largely a male society, where eating, drinking and gambling helped pass the time. An evening with one of the town's few women could cost hundreds of dollars.

In its time San Francisco has suffered seven devastating fires. the last one culminating with the 1906 earthquake which ruptured every water main in the city, allowing the fire to burn out of control. 4/5ths of the city was destroyed. Militia troops finally stopped the flames from advancing by dynamiting entire city blocks. In the end 28,000 buildings were destroyed and 500 people were dead.

Golden Gate Park is the world's largest man-made park, encompassing 1023.16 acres, on land purchased in 1868 by the city. William Hammond Hall is the man chiefly responsible for the park's landscape design. In 1871 he became the first park superintendent, and during the next 5 years he plotted curved roads and planted the first grasses, and then larger plants in a battle against the wind and sand. From 1887 to 1943 John McLaren, a Scottish gardner who tested potential assistants on their ability to spell plant names, served as park superintendent. In 1917 when he reached the city's mandatory retirement age of 70, an ordinance was passed exempting the Superintendent of Parks from this rule. His pension was cancelled and his salary doubled.

The Music Concourse has statues honoring national heroes and the city's settlers. McLaren did not like these figures; did not think that they belonged in the park, and tried to hide them with shrubbery.

Academy of Sciences building was built in 1916, although the Academy itself was founded in 1853, making it the oldest scientific institution in the West. the Steinhart Aquarium and Morrison Planetarium are located here.

Japanese Tea Garden was originally built for the Midwinter Fair of 1894. Today it houses the Asian Art Museum and the M.H. DeYoung Memorial Museum.

The Golden Gate Bridge was, until 1959, the longest in the world, with a 4,200 ft span. Joseph Strauss was the chief engineer of the bridge, which took 4-1/2 yrs to build. It was completed in May of 1937 for the cost of $35 million. At mid-span, the roadway is 260 ft above the water, a height requested by the Navy to allow battleships to pass beneath.

The bridge itself is 1.2 miles long and takes 2 men working 24 hours a day 4 years to paint. When they are finished, they start over again. The north tower stands 746 ft above the water.

The main cables are 7,650 ft long from anchore to anchore and 36.5 inches in diameter. The bridge was designed to be able to withstand winds of over 100 mph and be able to swing at mid-span as much as 27 ft. An average of 7 jumpers a month "take the plunge" from the bridge.

Fort Point was begun in 1853, modeled after Charleston, South Carolina's Fort Sumter. It was completed in 1861 and was suppose to guard the bay against a Confederate attack during the Civil War. However, the fort was never given a chance to test its mettle, as a grass-roots plot hatched by Confederate sympathizers in San Francisco to undermine the Yankee cause died for lack of funds and manpower, and the more palpable threat that the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah would blast its way into the bay was foiled by the war ending before the ship ever arrived.

It is the first and only brick coast artillery fortress west of the Mississippi River, built of locally manufactures red brick, granite and iron.

The fort was technically obsolete within a year of its completion because shells and rifled cannons developed during the Civil War achieved the ability to pierce brick fortifications.

Joseph Strauss admired the solidity of Fort Point. It was originally to have been demolished to make way for the Golden Gate Bridge, but the Strauss redesigned the south approach of the bridge to leave the fort intact.

The fort has been a National Historic Site since 1968, and was made famous by Kim Novak's suicide attempt in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

The Presidio was founded by the Spanish in 1776 as one of two original settlements in San Francisco. The Spanish garrison ruled the peninsula from here for the first 50 years of the city's history, chasing off Russian whalers and trappers.

On September 17, 1776, Jose Joaquin Moraga established a presidio, or fort, here; it was the 3rd of 4 in Alta California. (San Diego's in 1769, Monterey in 1770, San Francisco in 1776, and Santa Barbara in 1782.) Presidios were frontier outposts of the Spanish Empire which was centered in Madrid. Spain garrisoned this distant peninsula to keep Russian and Great Britain from gaining a foothold on the San Francisco Bay. From here four missions, two pueblos (towns with their own governments), a rancho, and an asistencia (outlying branch of a mission but without a priest were founded. In 1822, by accession, the fort became the northernmost outpost of the New Mexican Republic. In 1835 Mexico abandoned the Presidio and shifted its frontier garrison northward to Sonoma.

After 1847 (the end of the Mexican War) the Americans took over and the Presidio became a staging center for Indian wars, an outpost during the Civil War, and more recently headquarters for the Sixth Army Command, which fought in the Pacific during World War II.

The original Presidio was a walled camp 100 yards square surrounded by a palisade-type wall. After the 1906 earthquake and fire it became a vast refugee camp for the homeless and injured.

Palace of Fine Arts was built in the Beaux Arts style for the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915. It was designed by noted Berkeley architect Bernard Maybeck and was originally designed to look like a Roman ruin overtaken by bushes and trees. The original was built out of wood, chicken wire and plaster; it managed to survive until the 1950s. Walter S. Johnson, (who lived across the street and loved the building) a philanthropist, and a 1959 city bond issue and matching funds from the state, raised enough money to replicate - and simplify - the original out of reinforced concrete between 1962 and 1975.

Around the exterior of the dome are rectangular panels showing a nude woman (representing Art), being defended by nude men (Idealists) battling centaurs (Materialists). The boxes around the base were intended to hold trees and vines.

Cow Hollow (Union Street) takes its name from the days when cows grazed the valley between Russian Hill and the Presidio, and washerwoman would bring their loads to what was one of the very few sites of fresh water in the city. Problems with open sewage and complaints from neighbors up on Pacific Heights about the stench from the cows, brought the pastoral days to an end.

Lombard Street The 1000 block of Lombard Street, between Hyde and Leavenworth, is nicknamed "the crookedest street in the world." It has 8 switchbacks in its one-block descent. A little-used cobbled street with a 27% grade until 1922, the corkscrew design was installed by the city as a way of making the street accessible to automobiles.

1100 Lombard Street (NW corner of Hyde) This house was built for Robert Louis Stevenson's widow, Fannie.

Ghirardelli Square This red brick structure was originally the Pioneer Columbia Woolen Mill. In 1897 Domingo Ghirardelli moved his chocolate factory into the abandoned building. As the business grew, more structures were added to the complex. The chocolate empire was sold to Golden Grain Macaroni and the factory moved in 1960. In 1962 the property was purchased and saved from destruction by William Matson Roth. A $10 million restoration created a charming complex of 16 restaurants and 75 shops.

Fisherman's Wharf is one of San Francisco's single most popular visitor destination and attracts some 11 to 12 million people a year. In 1853 Harry Meiggs built a long wharf neat the foot of present-day Powell Street. Shipbuilders were active here in the 1860s along the sandy North Beach (now approximately Bay St.). With the construction of the Great Seawall, North Point Cove was quickly filled in. Al the flat blocks from Bay Street north are landfill that soon obliterated the northern beach. With the filling of the cove, lumber yard, warehouses, a woolen mill, chemical works, a gas lighting plant, and the Selby Lead and Smelting works located here.

In 1900 the fishing fleet was moved here from the foot of Union Street, and occasionally people would come down to watch the fishing boats unload. the big change to the district began in the 1960s as tourism boomed while industrial maritime activities dwindled. The opening of Cost Imports Plus in 1958, the adaptation of the old Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory to a major shopping complex in 1968, the rebuilding in 1968 of the 1907 California Fruit Canners Association red brick cannery as The Cannery, and in 1978 the development of Pier 39 transformed the Wharf into what it is today.

Alcatraz Island When the Spanish explorer de Ayala first sighted this island in 1775, he christened the place "Isla de los Alcatraces" (Island of the Pelicans), but never set foot on it.

When the Americans took over, they drove off the birds and transformed the rock into a fortress, then an army prison, and finally into the most dreaded penitentiary in the United States. The last transformation took place in 1934 at the peak of America's gangster scare, then guys like John Dillinger and "Pretty Boy" Floyd seemed to bust out of ordinary jails with toothpicks. An alarmed public demanded an escape-proof prison and the government chose Alcatraz.

The Rock was ringed by bone-freezing water, swirling from six to nine knots - enough to defeat even the strongest swimmers. At a cost of 260,000, the old army cages were transformed into tiers of tiny, toolproof one-man cells, guarded by machine-gun towers, walls, steel panels, and electronic metal detectors called "snitch boxes."

Into the prison went most of the criminal big shots who let themselves be taken alive - Al Capone, "Machine Gun Kelly," "Doc" Baker, "Creepy" Karpis, and a dozen more. All were broken by Alcatraz, except those who died while trying to escape.

The Oakland Bay Bridge was opened on November 12, 1936, three months before the Golden Gate, and is the world's longest steel high-level bridge, measuring 8-1/4 miles long approach to approach. It took three years to complete at a cost of $88 million - making it then the most costly single structure ever built. Construction was begun in 1933, during the depth of the Depression. The bridge was built by the State of California and financed by the New Deal Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

The foundation of one of the pieces extends deeper below water than those of any other bridge ever built - 242 ft. The pier is bigger than the largest of the Egyptian pyramids and required more cement than the Empire State Building in New York City.

The west crossing, the San Francisco side, consists of a double suspension bridge, while the Oakland side is of cantilever construction . The two sections are connected by the world's largest diameter tunnel blasted through Yerba Buena Island. The bridge has 6 lanes for westbound traffic on the upper deck and 6 lanes for eastbound traffic on the lower deck. Originally electric trains and trucks ran on the lower deck and cars on the upper, but the tracks were removed in the late 50s when trains were replaced by buses.

An upper section of the bridge collapsed onto the lower one during the October 1989 quake, killing one person. The damage was repaired in one month.

Bay Bridge Fun Facts

Yerba Buena Island was called Goat Island for many years; most of the island is occupied by the Navy. There are many buried treasure legends attached to it.

Treasure Island is a 400-acre man-made island built from 20 million cubic feet of sand and mud dredged from the bottom of the bay. It was created to be the site of the Golden Gate International Expedition of 1939. After the fair closed, it was taken over by the Navy as a training and embarkation center, although it had originally been scheduled to become San Francisco International Airport after the exposition.

Coit Tower stands atop Telegraph Hill surrounded by the trees of Pioneer Park, one of the oldest parks in the city. Originally a barren hilltop, this 295 ft hill got its name from a semaphore built here in 1850 to advise merchants in the port of the approach of ships. It functioned only 3-1/2 years before an electric telegraph station was built on Point Lobos, at the entrance to the Golden Gate, which bypassed the semaphore.

During the Gold Rush days, the residents of the then-remote port thronged the summit of the hill to watch the arrival of the Pacific Mail steamer with its letters and news from home. In 1876 a group of civic-minded businessmen purchased four lots at the top of the hill for $12,000 and donated them to the city to create Pioneer Park; later purchases by the city considerably expanded the park.

Lillie Hitchcock Coit, a pioneer San Franciscan, was brought to San Francisco as a child in 1851. She developed a life-long fascination with fires and firemen. As a young girl, she was made an honorary member of the Knickerbocker No. 5 Fire Company. She enjoyed "hanging out with the boys", smoking cigars and playing poker. A Southern sympathizer, she spent the war years first in the South and then in Paris. Eventually she returned to San Francisco and when she died in 1929 (old Knickerbocker No. 5 Co. was there at the funeral) she left $100,000 to the City of San Francisco "to be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved."

The Coit advisory Committee used the funds to erect the statue to the volunteer firemen that stands in Washington Square and to construct an observation tower atop Telegraph Hill. Arthur Brown Jr., the architect of the City Hall, was commissioned to design the 210 ft tall reinforced concrete tower which was completed in 1933. In form is said to suggest a firehose. Inside are WPA murals, part of the Federal Arts Project.

North Beach The original "beach" of North Beach is landlocked today. The waterfront once ran along San Francisco Street, now some 5 blocks inland. It was here that the Russian, French, German, and Irish first settled in San Francisco. The Italian way of life has characterized this neighborhood for much of this century, although in recent years a considerable amount of Asian money has flowed into the area, which borders Chinatown.

The first of the Italians, mostly Genovese and Sicilians, moved in the 1880s in to this often sunny valley where vegetables would grow, goats could graze on the pastures of Russian Hill, and fishermen could work. North Beach was almost completely destroyed in 1906.

By the 1940s, Italians were the largest foreign-born population in California. But in 1942, when "enemy aliens" were ousted from water front districts - and the city's Italian fishermen qualified as the enemy, thanks to the Mussolini regime - North Beach residents started packing for other neighborhoods in the city. After the war, the exodus continued.

Though Broadway once marked the border between Chinatown and North Beach, Chinatown has outgrown its old boundaries and today there are Chinese businesses in North Beach alongside Italian groceries, bakeries, butcher shops, cafes, and restaurants.

Chinatown The oldest street in San Francisco runs through the heart of Chinatown. During the city's years as the Spanish village of Yerba Buena, the street was called "Calle de la Fundacion." In 1852, it became DuPont and is still sometimes referred to as "Du Pon Gai" among the Chinese. Later the street was named after Ulysses S. Grant (Grant Ave.) as an early P.R. attempt to polish a reputation tarnished by illicit activities.

The area was first known as Little China and its boundary began at the foot of Sacramento St. The first Chinese immigrants to California came from the province of Gwang-dong - leaving behind drought and a civil war. They docked in San Francisco just a week after James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill. By 1850 there were over 4,000 Chinese men and only 7 Chinese women in the city.

For years Chinatown has been home to the largest community of Chinese anywhere outside of China. Today is has 20,000 residents, 3/4 who are foreign born. The median household income is $10,000.

The Chinatown Gate was designed by Clayton Lee in 1970, and was a gift to the city from the government of Taiwan.

Old St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church (600 California St. at Grant) Old St. Mary's was the first Roman Catholic cathedral on the Pacific coast and was dedicated Christmas Day, 1854, by Archbishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany and has been run by the Catholic missionary Paulist fathers since 1894. Damage from the 1906 earthquake and fire was repaired by 1909. The building was expanded in 1929, burned again in 1969 and rebuilt a second time.

Under its clock is the stern inscription: "Son Observe the Time and Fly from Evil." This message was placed here to face the brothels that once stood across the street in what is today St. Mary's Square.

St. Mary's Square Agitation for a park to replace the brothels clustered here was begun by Father M. Otis in 1895; the park was purchased by the city in 1906 after the earthquake.

The statue of Sun Yet-Sen (1866-1925) is by Beniamino Bufano and was commissioned by the New Deal's WPA and placed here in 1938. It is made of stainless steel and pink granite.

Transamerica Pyramid (600 Montgomery at Washington) Completed in 1972, this building has become a landmark because of its unusual shape and location at the end of Columbus Ave. Construction was begun in 1970 by L.A. architect, William Pereira and Associates.

The site on which is sits cost $8 million, while the building itself was completed for an additional $35 million. The pyramid was initially designed to be 55 stories high and 1000 ft high, but was scaled down to its present 48 stories, capped by a hollow 212 ft spire, for a total of 853 ft, making it the tallest building in San Francisco.

The building is composed of 3,000 quartz aggregate concrete panels weighing 3-1/2 tons each; it has also been built to sway as much as a foot for earthquake safety and the windows are all on pivots so that they can be washed from the inside.

Between 1853 and 1959, the site of the Montgomery side of the building was San Francisco's prime literary and artistic crossroads. Ambrose Pierce, Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller were frequent visitors tot he first floor bar and restaurant that was located here. It was here, too, that Mark Twain met a fireman named Tom Sawyer - who later opened a popular San Francisco saloon - in the basement steam baths. Later habitues included George Sterling, Maynard Dixon, and Sun Yat-sen, who devised the successful overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty while running a local newspaper, Young China, from his second-floor office.

The Stock Exchange Building (301 Pine at Sansome) was built in the 1930s and is a strange combination of classical and modern styles.

Union Square has been the heart of downtown San Francisco since 1850. Its name commemorates the Civil War rallies held here during which demonstrators pledged their loyalty to the Union. A granite shaft, designed by Newton Tharp, commemorates Admiral Dewey's victory at Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War in 1898. The face of the bronze statue of Victory atop the monument was modeled after a well-known San Francisco benefactress, Mrs. Adolph de Brettville Spreckles. It was dedicated in 1903 by resident Theodore Roosevelt.

Maiden Lane (Morton Street) Before the 1906 earthquake and fire this was one of the roughest areas, where prostitutes solicited openly and homicides averaged 10 per month. Legend has it that woman sat behind open windows and the gentlemen could lean through and have a feel for 10 cents; an inside visit cost anywhere between 25 cents and one dollar.

Market Street is one of the city's principal thoroughfares. It is 120 feet wide and extends in a southwesterly direction from the Ferry Building for a distance of 3.2 miles to the eastern base of Twin Peaks.

Hallidie Plaza is named for Andrew Smith Hallidie, popularly considered the "inventor" of the cable car in 1873. Actually he is more accurately described as the first successful developer of the cable car line.

In 1889, at their peak, San Francisco had 8 lines operating over 112 miles of track and employing some 1500 men. Because there were no traffic signals in 1882 the city required all cable cars to carry bells or gongs and ring them as they crossed intersections. After the 1906 fire and earthquake, traction companies replaced the cable cars with electric street cars where they could, keeping cable cars operating only on the steepest slopes.

In 1964 the existing system was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The entire cable car system was rebuilt between 1982 and 1984.

The City Hall dome is 300 ft high and was modeled after St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The dome is higher than that of the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. and was designed by Arthur Brown. The original City Hall was destroyed in 1906 and there was a race to finish the new one, but by 1915, only the exterior was completed. It was finished just in time for the Panama Pacific International Expedition in 1915.

The War Memorial Opera House (301 Van Ness) is the site of the signing of the U.N. Charter on June 26, 1945. Built in 1932, the building is the current home of the an Francisco Opera and Ballet.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Van Ness at McAllister) was California's first museum devoted to 20th Century art. Currently located in the Veteran's Building, it is scheduled to move to 3rd Street between Mission and Howard sometime in 1993.

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall (210 Van Ness at Grove) was completed in 1980 at a cost of $33 million. All but $5 million was raised privately. It is named after Louise M. Davies, who contributed $5 million towards completion of the project.

Alamo Square is located on the 700 block of Steiner Street between Fulton and Hayes streets. The six identical houses by carpenter Matthew Kavanaugh were built in 1894 and are commonly called the "Painted Ladies."

Haight-Ashbury consists of two distinct area; the Haight itself, located along the commercial strip of Haight Street and the flats along the Golden Gate Park Panhandle; and Ashbury Heights, a fancier district south of Haight Street that climbs the slopes of Buena Vista Heights.

It emerged in the 1960s as the mecca of the counter-cultural scene. The first hippies were an offshoot of the Beats, many of whom had moved out of North Beach in favor of the cheap rent and large spaces in the run-down Victorian houses of the Haight. The post-Beat bohemia that subsequently began to develop here was a small affair at first, involving the use of drugs and the embrace of Eastern religions and philosophy, together with a marked anti-American political stance. Where Beat philosophy had emphasized self-indulgence, the hippies, at least on the face of it, attempted to be more embracing, emphasizing concepts like "universal truth" and "cosmic awareness."

In January of 1966 Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters hosted a Trips Festival at Longshoresman's Hall near Fisherman's Wharf. Thousands attended, dropped acid, and spaced-out on rock music. The word hippie was born. The "San Francisco Sound" emerged and people wore flowers in their hair and passed them out to San Franciscans on their way to work downtown. On January 14, 1967 the Human Be-In/Gathering of the Tribes was celebrated by 20,000 people at Golden Gate Park's old polo fields and the new bohemia got its first media attention. Entertainment was provided by the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Jefferson Airplane.

During the spring of 1967, the Gray Line began taking tourists in sealed buses on the "Hippie Hop: the only foreign tour within the continental limits of the U.S.A." Hippies trotted alongside the buses, which were crawling their way through the gawkers, holding mirrors up to the bus windows.

Along with the 75,000 or so young people who descended on Haight-Ashbury came violent individuals, drug dealers, and the mentally deranged. The hippie dream was quickly becoming a nightmare, as drug users became addicts. What was left of the Haight was wiped out by a flood of cheap heroin in 1970-71.

By the mid-1980s the Haight street commercial strip settled down to a lively viable mixture of radical (or nostalgic) clothing stores, inexpensive restaurants, and many new and used book stores and record shops.

112 Lyon Street        Janis Joplin

1525 Haight Street   Jimi Hendrix

636 Cole Street        Charles Manson

231 Ashbury Street is home of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Convent. In the early and most scandalous years, people thought they were a bunch of wild drug-taking drag queens - impersonating nuns at that! And there was more than a grain of truth in it. But, like the USO girls of the gay community, they tend to be much less political these days, sponsoring the Halloween celebration in the Castro to raise money for earthquake relief, AIDS organizations, community projects, Cuban refugees, and the Red Cross, among others.

The best known member, Sister Boom Boom, ran for city supervisor in 1982. On the ballot he was listed last and his party affiliation was given as "nun of the above." He received a great number of votes, but not enough to win. Jack Fertig, better known as Sister Boom Boom, later hung up his habit while recovering from drug and alcohol problems. Officially the Sister Boom Boom persona is retired.

710 Ashbury is where the Grateful Dead lived communally during the hippie days. Some suggest that more items of tie-dyed apparel have been photographed in front of this structure than any other single location.

245 Hyde Street was home to the Wally Heider Studios. Wally Heider had the hottest studios in town in the late 60s and was among the first to document the San Francisco sound. Credence Clearwater Revival recorded many songs here, as did Santana and the Grateful Dead. The building still houses a recording outfit called the Hyde Street Studios.

2400 Fulton Street was once the scene of Jefferson Airplane's sex, drug and rock 'n roll parties. At the time it was more suitably painted black with dark orange columns.

Twin Peaks The Costsnoan Indians believed that the peaks were created when a married couple quarreled so loudly that the Great Spirit separated them with a clap of thunder in order to have peace. Spanish explorers named them Breasts of the Indian Girl, while the Americans preferred the current name of Twin Peaks.

The Sutro TV Tower is located on top of Mt. Sutro. This tower supports television antennae for several San Francisco stations, and is the tallest structure in the city.

U.S. Mint This building was completed in 1937 to replace the Old Mint on Fifth Street (across from the hotel). It is used only for the minting of pennies at this time. A fortress-like structure, it is constructed of steel reinforced with granite and concrete.

Mission Dolores (16th and Dolores) is the oldest building in San Francisco. The mission, originally Mission San Francisco de Asis, was founded by Franciscan friars in 1776 on the banks of a lagoon which, since it was discovered on the Feast Day of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, was called Nuestra Señora de los Dolores. The adobe chapel survived the 1906 earthquake and was restored by Willis Polk.

The Levi Strauss Building (250 Valencia) dates from 1906 and houses a museum on the history of the blue jeans maker. Free factory tours on Wednesdays at 10:30.