Downtown -
Financial District and Jackson Square
"The unity of our empire hangs on the decision of this day." Senator William H. Steward, champion of
California statehood.Nowhere in San Francisco does one find as much important history of this city, and perhaps of all the Far Western United States, compressed into as short an interval as the five blocks of Montgomery Street from Market Street to the present-day Transamerica Pyramid at the foot of Columbus Avenue. Montgomery Street isn't just the main avenue of the Financial District. It was the original waterfront street of Yerba Buena Cove. The streets east of Montgomery (Leidensdorff, Sansome, Battery, Front, Davis, Drumm and the Embarcadero)
occupy a landfill extension. A modern novelist could make his mark telling the tales of this physically small precinct without ever venturing outside its limits.It's flat down here. Hills rise away from here to the north and west. An 1850 drawing of San Francisco looking from Yerba Buena Cove shows California Street going straight up a mountainside of a hill, the one now called Nob, from the harbor. After it was decided not to route the first streets around hills, the custom persisted for most of the city. You have to like a place where challenges are met head on.
First, let's look at the lavish architecture along Montgomery and intersecting streets beginning at the plaza in front of the Wells Fargo Bank, pictured at right. This is at the corner of Montgomery and Market. On the north side of Market Street, north-south streets meet east-west streets at right angles, and both of these collide with Market Street at nearly 45-degree angles. For each of these two streets, Market is a terminus of the street. South of Market, the north-south streets begin at Market with which they intersect at right angles. This pattern continues all the west to Van Ness Avenue. (See map.) Only a few streets west of Van Ness including Van Ness have the same name on both sides of Market. Therefore, and somwhat delightfully, most of the buildings on the north side of Market Street have triangular cross sections... like the Flatiron Building in New York inside the narrow angle where Broadway and Fifth Avenue cross. We will not skimp on the photography in this billion-dollar neighborhood.
The history of the Far West in one place- Proceed up the concrete canyon at right toward the Pyramid. At this corner (Market at Montgomery): Wells Fargo Bank whose motto "We deliver. Always have," must have paid off. (Click for 768 x 1024 view.)
Hallidie Building, Sutter St., a few doors west of Montgomery
(east side of street)
"This block is ours.That over there [pointing] belongs to some other smaller bank." - Information supplied by sales clerk in ground floor store. (west side of street)
California Street
400 Montgomery Street
Site of Billy Ralston's Bank
of California
Even the Bay was here. Plaque
at corner of Montgomery and Commercial. In the early 1840s, it was
decided in Washington that someone had better get out to California and
see what they were up to.
Commercial Street at Montgomery Looking slightly uphill toward Kearny St on edge of Chinatown. One of SF's oldest streets in the American era. At right, with hitching posts, is site of the United States Sub-Treasury which earlier was the San Francisco Mint. It now shares space with the Pacific Heritage Museum, where Chinese art is exhibited.
across street from Transamerica Pyramid
foot of Columbus Avenue
(Click for 768 x 1024 view.)
The
most beautiful building in San Francisco?
The Sentinel Building,
Kearny and Columbus. Steel frame building, completed in 1907 was
under construction at the time of the earthquake. It is now used
as the offices of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope Studios.
This corner at the time of
the 1906 earthquake and fire
Belli Building, 722
Montgomery St.