Just blocks from a looming 853-foot-tall skyscraper, an elderly vendor hawks exotic-looking vegetables piled under signs hand-lettered in Chinese characters. A woman sporting a pierced nose and blue fingernails gulps down a cappuccino before dashing off to work at a boutique selling vintage hippie clothing. In an antique shop, two young men search for a table to furnish a renovated Victorian. An early morning jogger weaves through a serene park where ghostly fog frames eucalyptus trees. And under an evening sky, the Golden Gate Bridge arches over San Francisco Bay as the green- and brown-flecked hills of the Marin Headlands blur into the distance.
It seems that everywhere one turns in San Francisco an intriguing juxtaposition or a picture-postcard view appears. The city's popular image is that of a worldly seaport whose sophisticated citizens are blessed with the finer things—good food, culture, magnificent settings. Obviously, such an ideal is in part misrepresentative. San Franciscans have had to cope with a litany of typical urban ills, from air and water pollution to inner-city decay to political violence.
Still, San Francisco is seductive. Its disparate geography, architecture, people and ideas defy an orderly blueprint yet somehow manage to coexist in harmony. Certainly the city's location is one of the loveliest anywhere. Varying in elevation from sea level to 933 feet, it rests on some 40 hills at the northern end of a narrow peninsula, bounded on one side by the Pacific Ocean and on the other by San Francisco Bay. The nearly landlocked bay is connected to the ocean by a narrow strait.
A pair of notable bridges arch over the bay's waters. While more than 280,000 vehicles a day cross the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge has become a symbol of San Francisco—even more so than cable cars or Victorian houses. Completed in 4 years, its single-suspension span is anchored by 746-foot-high twin towers—the world's tallest. The structure was built to withstand 100-mile-per-hour winds, and its 220-foot clearance allows even the tallest vessels to pass underneath. For a great panorama, throw on a jacket, brave the gusty conditions and hike across its 1.7-mile walkway; pedestrians are allowed on the bridge during daylight hours.
The Greater San Francisco Bay Area is home to more than 7 million people. It wasn't always so, although the city's bayside location attracted its first colonizers. Spaniards established the Presidio, a military post, at the northern end of the San Francisco peninsula in 1776; that same year Franciscan priest Junípero Serra founded the Mission San Francisco de Asis.
Meanwhile, the town that was to become San Francisco was coalescing around what is now Portsmouth Square in present-day Chinatown. The settlement of Yerba Buena—under Mexican rule—was christened in 1835. It was renamed San Francisco in 1847 after fighting broke out between the United States and Mexico and the latter was forced to relinquish territory that soon became California. The city was incorporated in 1850.
In 1848 nuggets of gold were discovered in the American River near Coloma, northeast of San Francisco. By 1849 adventurers, dubbed “Forty-niners,” were arriving by the thousands; riches were accumulated and lost, and the drowsy village exploded into a frontier boomtown. While many Forty-niners became farmers or shopkeepers rather than millionaires, their impact was such that the city's football team was named for them.
Along with wealth came vice, and San Francisco became notorious for its murders. From the gold rush era to the end of the 19th century, the waterfront district was known as the Barbary Coast. The term was a reference to the same-named coastal region of northern Africa that once was dominated by pirates; the city's saloons, gambling dens and brothels had a similar lawless reputation. When the gold dried up in the late 1850s, the Comstock Silver Lode, discovered in the territory of Nevada, kept coffers full. San Francisco became a financial metropolis; its bankers and investors patronized grand hotels and dined in sumptuous restaurants.
Perhaps the city's most epochal event was the 1906 earthquake. Strong tremors had been felt before, notably in 1868, but this temblor proved disastrous. And more destructive than the quake itself was the subsequent fire. Ignited by gas leaking from ruptured mains and fanned by high winds, it destroyed much of the city, including its central business district. Rebuilding was quick; in 1915 the Panama-Pacific International Exposition celebrated both San Francisco's renaissance and the opening of the Panama Canal.
San Francisco's reputation for tolerance and unconventionality continued to grow. The Beat movement of the 1950s flourished in San Francisco's North Beach, where beatniks frequently dressed in black and affected a vocabulary of hip terms borrowed primarily from jazz musicians. The flower children of the 1960s, a generation of long-haired, tie-dyed clad youth, also migrated to San Francisco. By 1967 the city was the undisputed capital of peace, love and psychedelic music, with the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood serving as the hippie movement's spiritual center. And during the 1970s the Castro neighborhood in particular fostered an open expression of identity and lifestyle for gay men and women.
This human melting pot was shaken by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Centered near Santa Cruz, it struck Oct. 17 just before the third World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's, stunning the television-watching world. City damage was relatively minor, although portions of freeways in Oakland buckled or collapsed in rubble. The quake was a sobering reminder of the geologic volatility of the region, where earthquake safety drills are a grade school routine.
San Francisco was at one time home base for the Pacific whaling industry and an embarkation point for imports and exports between the United States and the Orient. Piers still line the Embarcadero, the waterfront area facing the bay's eastern shoreline. They radiate like fingers both north and south of the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street—headquarters for port activities. The waterfront has since transformed into somewhat of a tourist attraction, with Pier 39 as its centerpiece.
The city is a financial center and the administrative heart of the West, one of the country's biggest tourist destinations and a major convention, commerce and manufacturing center. San Francisco shares with Los Angeles the seat of the Pacific Stock Exchange and has been a financial power since gold rush days. Union Bank of California and Wells Fargo & Co. are headquartered here.
Architecturally, San Francisco is characterized by two sharply contrasting styles: sleek skyscrapers and late 19th-century wooden houses collectively known as Victorians. In an area where space is at a premium, both types of structures stress the vertical. San Francisco's skyline is notably compact. The skyscrapers—many more than 500 feet tall—seem even more impressive due to the many elevated vantage points from which they can be seen. Their area of concentration, the blocks around Montgomery Street, is known as Wall Street West.
While the majority of downtown's steel-and-glass towers date only from the late 1960s, most of the finest Victorians were built 1870-1906. Standing close together, as there is precious little room for extensive gardens or grounds, these “painted ladies” are another San Francisco symbol. Many along Van Ness Avenue and on Nob Hill sadly were destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire. But thousands of Victorians remain, and their loving (and expensive) renovation is a full-time industry.
The original houses were constructed primarily of redwood and were called “stick” houses because of the vertical orientation; most were attached and crowned by gables. Italianate Victorians borrowed architectural details from the Romanesque decorative tradition. Queen Anne Victorians, appearing in the 1890s, were embellished with intricately ornamented towers, turrets and cupolas, all painted in vibrant colors.
Rows of the dwellings are scattered throughout San Francisco's residential neighborhoods. Haight-Ashbury, Noe Valley, Potrero Hill and the Mission District are all rich with Victorians. From the corner of Hayes and Steiner streets in Alamo Square, a row of quaint Victorians huddles against a backdrop of towering modern skyscrapers. And picturesque Italianate Victorians line the 1800 block of Laguna Street (between California and Pine streets) in Pacific Heights. Such delightful views contribute in no small measure to the charms of this captivating city by the bay.
The crests of many city hills, particularly Twin Peaks, afford matchless views of downtown and the East Bay. At night when the bridges are lighted, the view is even more impressive. Standing on a hilltop, watching the fog swirl in through the Golden Gate and looking at the city's skyline, it is easy to understand Rudyard Kipling's lament: “San Francisco has only one drawback—'tis hard to leave.”
