Contemporary Metropolis

Perhaps more than any other major American city, San Francisco is a collection of neighborhoods. Each of these enclaves is geographically distinct, defined by an aspect of the city's physical contours. Most often these neighborhoods have been shaped by a particularly colorful history, and they often are associated with a particular ethnic or social group.

Several of San Francisco's neighborhoods take their names from their geographical locations, especially from the city's 43 hills, and none is better known than Nob Hill. Originally called California Street Hill, for the major thoroughfare that runs east to west from the bay to the Golden Gate, Nob Hill is said to have acquired its present name from the term nabob, a word of Hindu derivation meaning a very rich or important man.

In the late 19th century, many wealthy families built their mansions near the summit of this hill. Among them were railroad magnates Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Collis Huntington, each recalled today by a hotel bearing his name that stands where his mansion once stood. A rare surviving example of the opulence of this age is the Pacific Union Club, a chocolate-brown sandstone mansion built as the residence of mining pioneer and banker James Flood. A distinguished neighbor and colleague of these men was Charles Crocker, whose family donated the land on which his mansion stood to the Episcopal church as the site of Grace Cathedral, a majestic Gothic structure whose stained glass rose window looks out over Huntington Park. Other notable religious buildings in the city are St. Mary's Cathedral, a stark modern structure designed by Pietro Belluschi and Pier Luigi Nervi; Temple Emanu-El, a domed synagogue showing Moorish architectural influence; and the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin, whose design reflects the congregation's Russian Orthodox heritage.

Nob Hill's development was made possible by the introduction in 1873 of the cable car. Invented by Andrew Hallidie, this mode of transportation was designed to climb and descend the steep hills of San Francisco. Looking like a trolley, the cable car is moved by a continuous motorized cable that is sunk into the street. When the car's motorman yanks a long lever, a mechanism beneath the car grips the cable and the car is pulled forward. Another lever lets the car stop in place. While cable cars are one of San Francisco's prime tourist attractions, they also are used by residents for everyday transportation. The system was completely overhauled in 1982–84.

Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill are also fashionable residential districts of homes with gardens set on wandering lanes. Russian Hill was probably named for the burial place on its summit that served the city's Russian colony, including sailors who came to hunt seals and sea otters. Telegraph Hill was named for the Morse code signal station erected on its summit in 1853. On the site is the landmark Coit Tower, which provides visitors with splendid bay and city views. The cylindrical structure was built in 1933 with funds provided by the eccentric Lillie Hitchcock Coit. A fire-fighting buff, she had the tower erected to memorialize the city's volunteer firemen.

Since the 1960s San Francisco has energetically been redeveloping its downtown area. Entire sections were razed to make room for new office towers, theaters, and residential enclaves. In what some residents disparage as “Manhattanization,” the city's profile has been dramatically altered by the skyscrapers and hotel towers sprouting in the commercial and financial districts. The 1,500-room convention hotel that opened on the day of the 1989 earthquake has, for example, been dubbed the “Jukebox Marriott” for the tasteless design of its silvery glass towers.

The modern symbol of the city is the Transamerica Pyramid (1972), the spectacular work of William Pereira. John Portman's Hyatt Regency Hotel (1973), with its innovative 20-story atrium, is part of the Embarcadero Center complex (1971–81) that brought new vigor to a deteriorating downtown. Its four massive slabs rise near the foot of California Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares. Embarcadero Two is the headquarters of Levi Strauss, maker of the jeans that are San Francisco's most famous product.

Even more dramatic perhaps is the redevelopment of the blocks located South of Market Street, known as SOMA. An area that as late as the 1970s consisted almost entirely of run-down industrial buildings and dilapidated housing, SOMA now has refurbished office buildings, new and rehabilitated homes, and chic boutiques and restaurants. The contemporary-style Moscone Center (1981) is a large convention space with room for major trade shows and political gatherings. The enormous Yerba Buena Gardens complex nearby is a recreational and shopping development.

Typical of the urban change is the transformation of the area known as South Park. First settled as a fashionable residential enclave in the mid-19th century, it deteriorated when the gentry began building their homes on Nob Hill. Light industry established factories there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When the Bay Bridge to Oakland was built, the approaches cut off South Park from the city to the north. In its isolation it became a slum, but with redevelopment South Park was rediscovered as a home for small businesses, restaurants, and residences.

Along the northern waterfront Fisherman's Wharf, at the end of one of the cable car lines, became a tourist attraction in the 1960s with its “walkaway” seafood treats, floating maritime museum, and street entertainers. The most popular boat tour from the wharf goes to Alcatraz Island, the former federal prison. Architectural souvenirs of the era of cargo ships have been converted into charming walk-through complexes of atmospheric restaurants, smart shops, and galleries. Among these are Ghirardelli Square, once a chocolate factory; the Cannery, built in 1894 for Del Monte's fruit and vegetable operations; Pier 39, reconstructed with a New England look, using timbers from old ships; and the Anchorage, which has a miniamphitheater. Nearby along the bay is the Marina District—known as Harbor View when its natural amphitheater was the scene of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition and as the Marina-Vanderbilt Tract (for the primary owner, Virginia Vanderbilt) when the conversion into a chic residential area began.

People

The population in The City (residents refer to their town as The City) is about 725,000, compared to 3.3 million in Los Angeles. Because of San Francisco's modest area, residents are densely packed: about 16,000 persons per square mile (6,000 per square kilometer), as compared with approximately 7,500 (2,900) in Los Angeles. During weekday working hours the population swells from the many residents of nearby communities in Marin County and Alameda County who commute across the Golden Gate or Bay bridges to work in the city. The population of the San Francisco metropolitan area is more than 1.5 million, and the total population of this area combined with Oakland across the bay and San Jose 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the southeast is more than 6 million.

San Francisco's population grew from less than 35,000 in 1850 to more than 56,000 in 1860 and about 150,000 in 1870. The great increase in population was primarily accounted for by a large influx of Chinese. The incentive that led thousands to leave their Far East homes for the United States was the steady work on railroad construction. For the businessmen building the line, Chinese workers were a cheap source of labor. By 1865 approximately 6,000 Chinese were working on the railroad, and this number rose to 15,000 by 1869. San Francisco's Chinatown is the largest Chinese community outside of Asia. For decades after its development it consisted of squalid tenements and harbored opium dens and bordellos. Today it is a thriving residential neighborhood whose major attractions are curio shops and restaurants.

So pronounced has been the growth of the Asian community that many Asian Americans now live in the Richmond and Sunset districts. These sections, which are characterized by blocks of neat semidetached single-family homes, have drawn Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese newcomers. The Japanese, who have long played a major role in California's history, are primarily congregated in the part of the city called the Western Addition. Centered on the slopes of Pacific Heights, the neighborhood known as Japantown has a huge ethnic center, flanked by the symbolic five-story Peace Pagoda. (See also Asian Americans.)

North of Chinatown, between Russian and Telegraph hills, is an area known as North Beach—long ago the beach of an inlet. Although the Italian community has congregated in this section, the area was first inhabited by South Americans, then Irish, and then Latin Americans. From the 1860s to the earthquake-fire of 1906, the area was a center of prostitution, gambling, and carousing. It was known as the Barbary Coast because its rough-hewn inhabitants were thought to resemble pirates who lived on the North Africa coast of the same name. Since the late 1960s its main street, Broadway, has been notorious for its sidewalk barkers and uninhibited all-night clubs.

The ethnic diversity of San Francisco is reflected in its citizens' open-mindedness to alternative life-styles. In the 1960s the national counterculture was centered in the section called the Haight. Haight-Ashbury, the intersection of two streets in what was once a middle-class neighborhood, became a symbol for youthful rebellion led by hippies, who listened to acid rock, experimented with drugs, adopted Eastern religions, and rejected their parents' conventions.

The Castro District, named after its main street, is the center of the local gay community. From its earliest days San Francisco seemed hospitable to male homosexuals. During World War II thousands of homosexual servicemen who had been expelled from the Pacific theater found new lives after they were sent back to their port of debarkation, which was San Francisco. The Castro is notable for its archetypal Victorian houses, known as “painted ladies.” These multistory structures with fancy decorative detail and coats of pastel paints, have been lovingly restored.

Culture and the Arts

San Francisco's commitment to civic amenities goes back to its early years. In 1868 the city purchased more than 1,000 acres (400 hectares) for use as Golden Gate Park. This vast oasis is a rectangle of green that reaches from the city center to the ocean. Landscaped in the rustic English garden style—with meadows, gardens, lakes and waterfalls—the park provides an instant getaway for city dwellers.

In 1894 the wooded park was the venue of the California Midwinter International Exposition, and two of its most popular attractions still stand: a Japanese tea garden and an art exhibit that grew into the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. The park's conservatory is a copy of Kew Gardens in England; its ornate Victorian greenhouse was originally brought by sea from England for reerection on a San Jose estate. The park's Asian Art Museum houses the Avery Brundage collection. The California Academy of Sciences comprises a planetarium and the Steinhart Aquarium.

Also on the grounds is the 60,000-seat Kezar Stadium, until 1971 the home of professional football's 49ers. With baseball's Giants, they now share 3Com Park, formerly Candlestick Park, which was built in 1958 about 8 miles (13 kilometers) south of the city on the way to the international airport. The stadium has always been plagued by high winds and cold fogs from the bay.

Civic Center—a great complex of city, state, and federal buildings—also provides a venue for cultural events in its Performing Arts Center. The San Francisco Opera shares a 3,000-seat theater in the opulent War Memorial Opera House with the San Francisco Ballet, America's oldest professional ballet company. The home of the San Francisco Symphony is the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, a controversial structure that has been found deficient both architecturally (resembling a giant bear trap) and acoustically since it opened in 1981. The adjoining Veteran's Building houses the Museum of Modern Art. In addition to the Herbst Theatre in the Civic Center complex, professional playhouses thrive in the city. The American Conservatory Theatre, the most established, is the largest resident theater company in the United States.

The California Palace of the Legion of Honor was modeled after the museum of the same name in Paris. Given to San Francisco in 1924 by sugar magnate Adolph B. Spreckels and his wife in memory of the state's dead in World War I, the museum is devoted primarily to the arts of France. Ethnic museums include the Mexican Museum, the only one in the United States devoted entirely to Mexican art and folk culture from the pre-Columbian period to contemporary works; its exhibits include paintings by Chicano farmhands who come north to help with the harvest.

San Francisco has always welcomed writers. The 19th-century novelists Bret Harte and Frank Norris made the city their home. In the 20th century the movement called the San Francisco Renaissance found its most public expression in the writings of the beat authors of the 1950s. The most famous were Allen Ginsberg (‘Howl'), Jack Kerouac (‘On the Road'), and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a poet who founded the City Lights bookstore and publishing company. The Beat writers congregated in North Beach, giving this section a reputation as a haven for bohemians.

An aspect of culture that is taken more seriously here than in many other places is food. California cuisine is a name applied to food prepared in a way that is thought to reflect particularly local virtues. As developed by such chefs as Alice Waters (owner of Berkeley's Chez Panisse) and Jeremiah Tower (a former chef at Waters' restaurant who became owner of the equally successful Stars in San Francisco), California cuisine uses only the freshest of local ingredients and prepares them in ways that enhance their natural textures and flavors. Their meals are often complemented by wines from California, in whose Napa and Sonoma valleys vintners continue local winemaking traditions started in the 19th century.

Transportation

To reach their nearest neighbors—the populous communities of Marin County to the north and Berkeley and Oakland to the east—San Franciscans were long forced to rely on ferries. The terminus for the numerous ferry lines was the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero at the foot of Market Street. Modeled after the cathedral tower, or Giralda, in Seville, Spain, its 235-foot (72-meter) clock tower was erected in 1896 and was long the tallest structure in the city. Sadly its handsome gray sandstone facade has been disfigured by the Embarcadero Freeway that runs in front of it, cutting it off from downtown. Now that it no longer has as many as 50 million passengers passing through its doors annually, it houses the headquarters of the San Francisco Port Authority, a world trade center, and a variety of other businesses.

The Golden Gate Bridge, which links San Francisco with Marin County, has become a symbol of the city, a structure admired both for its utility and its gracefulness. Work began on this span in 1931, but it did not open until May 1937. In 1933 work began on a long-cherished plan for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. This 8¹/₂-mile- (13.7-kilometer-) long structure, which at the time of its construction was the longest suspension bridge in the world, was opened to traffic in November 1936. Over time the heavy traffic contributed to the congestion that forced other modes of transbay transportation to be devised, such as the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), a sleek subway that connects San Francisco with communities of the East Bay.

Before either bridge was constructed, plans were under way for an airfield to serve an industry then in its infancy. In 1927 a site about 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of the city in the community of Millbrae was selected. Further expansion of the San Francisco International Airport began in 1960.

History

Long before the region was colonized, it was home to the Costanoan Indians. Europeans first sighted the area in 1769, but the bay was not entered by ship until 1775. The Spanish commander of the exploration noted, “It is not a port, but a whole pocketful of ports.” The peninsula was settled in 1776. Leading a party of more than 200 Spanish colonists, Capt. Juan Bautista de Anza established a presidio, or military headquarters, and a mission. Still in use today, the 1,400-acre (567-hectare) presidio and the Mission Dolores are San Francisco's earliest links with its past. American occupation of the infant city took place on July 9, 1846, when the United States flag was raised above the customhouse and control of the settlement passed to the United States from Mexico.