Since you’re riding history, why not see history too?
When Andrew Hallidie invented the cable car in 1873, Ulysses S. Grant was president. There were 37 states in the union and just one-eighth of today’s US population. The transcontinental railroad had opened just four years earlier. And San Francisco, less than 30 years old, was already America’s tenth-largest city. Only one other western US city was one of the 100 most populous. It wasn’t LA, which was still a village. It was Sacramento at #89.
Enriched by the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the Nevada Comstock Lode of 1859, San Francisco in 1873 was the most sophisticated city west of the Mississippi and remained the undisputed financial, commercial, and cultural center of the West deep into the 20th century. Here are some places worth visiting that evoke the San Francisco of past decades, on or near the routes of today’s cable cars and F-line vintage streetcars.
Fisherman’s Wharf
Museé Mechanique – This arcade features 300 vintage mechanical games dating back almost as long as the cable cars. And you can play them yourself. At the end of Taylor Street on Pier 45, a four block walk from Bay & Taylor, the terminal of the Powell-Mason line, and just steps from the Taylor Street stop of the F-line historic streetcars.
USS Pampanito and SS Jeremiah O’Brien – Two ships that helped win World War II, open to the public. The Pampanito is a 1943 submarine that sank six Japanese ships in the Pacific, berthed at Pier 45. The O’Brien is one of two surviving liberty ships of 2,700 built to supply our troops and allies during the War, recently moved to Pier 35, near the Alcatraz ferry.
San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park – This National Park Service unit includes historic ships berthed at the Hyde Street Pier, the Moderne-style Maritime Museum, and Aquatic Park, where the Hyde Street cable cars turn around. Interpretive displays offer visitors the sights, sounds, smells and stories of Pacific Coast maritime history.
Ghirardelli Square – In 1962, shipping magnate William Matson Roth and his mother, Lurline Matson Roth, bought the empty Ghirardelli chocolate factory to save it from demolition. They made history with the historic structure, creating the first-ever adaptive reuse project in the US. The 1957 rerouting of a Powell cable car line down Hyde Street helped energize the reuse of numerous historic buildings in the area. Ghirardelli Square remains a popular shopping and dining destination, famous for its ice cream parlors run by the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.
Nob Hill
Grace Cathedral – This English Gothic structure was erected between 1927 and 1964, and today hosts a wide range of cultural events as well as Episcopal worship services. Walk the labyrinth, view the stained-glass windows with figures ranging from Adam and Eve to Albert Einstein, examine the monumental Gilberti doors, and savor its imposing space. At California and Taylor Streets, across from the public Huntington Park, where the mansion of railroad magnate C. P. Huntington stood until it was incinerated in the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake.
Living Large - Atop Nob Hill, at Mason and California Streets, gaze at several monuments to the high life. Experience what servicemen headed for the Pacific in World War II did at the Top of the Mark (Mark Hopkins Hotel). Across California Street, walk through the spectacular public areas of the Fairmont Hotel (and see the Tony Bennett statue outside while you hum “I left my heart….”. Walk around the Pacific-Union Club across Mason Street, a private all-men’s club occupying the 1886 brownstone mansion of silver king James C. Flood. It and the Fairmont were the only structures on Nob Hill whose exteriors survived the 1906 earthquake and fire. Walk a block north on Mason and you’ll see a handsome L-shaped apartment building with a motor court, looking vaguely familiar…or, if you’re a Hitchcock fan, absolutely familiar, for the elegant Brocklebank Apartments, built in 1926, are where Kim Novak lived in the 1958 thriller Vertigo.
Cable Car Tower - Where the cable car lines cross at Powell and California, notice the little building on the southeast corner. It’s been there since 1907. A signaler inside operates lights a block downhill to tell cable car gripmen on both lines when it’s safe to ascend the hill. This avoids the chance of catastrophic cable car collisions at the world’s only cable car crossroads. Here’s its story.
Chinatown
Grant Avenue – The postcard image of Chinatown, rebuilt after earthquake and fire leveled the original neighborhood in 1906, with some notable buildings in a faux-oriental style specifically intended to draw tourists. Many of the shops on Grant Avenue are still aimed at tourists, but others serve local people. Read a concise history of Chinatown here.
Stockton Street, one block west of Grant, is today the commercial strip of Chinatown, with many markets featuring foods popular in Chinese culture. Walk one way on Grant, the other on Stockton (and check out the cross streets and alleys too) for a trip through the history of Chinese residents of San Francisco, a history of confronting racism and exclusion to gain standing and power in the City. If you want a guided tour, here’s a very special one.
Chinese Historical Society of America operates a museum at 965 Clay Street, right on Andrew Hallidie’s original cable car line. It’s just a few steps downhill from the Powell cables and two blocks from the California cable line. Hours are Wed.-Sun. 11 am - 4 pm. They also offer walking tours of Chinatown.
Cable Car Powerhouse and Museum - Free and must-see, at Washington and Mason Streets, where the two Powell lines join and three downhill blocks on Mason from the California line. Watch the huge winding wheels power the four cables that haul the cable cars; see exhibits, including one of Hallidie’s original Clay Street cable cars and a cable train from Sutter Street. Open Tue.-Thu. 11 am -4 pm., Fri.-Sun. 11 am- 5 pm. Gift shop.
Portsmouth Square is the oldest public space in San Francisco, dating to the era of Mexican rule. After Capt. John Montgomery captured the City in 1846 and raised the American flag, the plaza was renamed for his ship. Hallidie’s first cable car line terminated here, at Clay and Kearny Streets. Today, it is often descirbed as Chinatown’s “living room”, where residents gather to exercise, stroll, and relax. A great place to people watch. Just across Kearny Street, inside the Hilton, is the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco; worth the visit.
Union Square
Union Square itself was set aside by Mayor John Geary in 1850 as public parkland, when it and the surrounding area were still sand dunes. It got its name from the pro-Union rallies held there before and during the Civil War. By the time the cable car was invented a quarter-century later, the blocks surrounding Union Square were already becoming San Francisco’s retail center, anchored by immigrant merchants from France and other European countries. Today, Union Square Alliance represents the retail area, mounting arts and cultural programs and helping with security and cleaning.
Maiden Lane is a two-block narrow pedestrian street across Stockton Street from the square itself. It’s lined with boutiques, including the only Frank Lloyd Wright building in the City, whose interior curving ramp presaged Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum. Before the 1906 earthquake and fire leveled it, Maiden Lane was a red-light area. Urbanist Jane Jacobs lauded its 1950s transformation to one of America’s first car-free shopping streets.
Hallidie Plaza, at Market and Powell Streets adjoining the cable car turntable, is included here both because it is named for the inventor of the cable car and because it symbolizes the City’s transformation 100 years after the cable cars started up. The sunken plaza was created by ripping down low-rise retail buildings to create an expansive entrance to the two-level underground subway beneath the City’s main street, Market. The sleek regional rapid transit system, BART, enabled multitudes more commuters to reach San Francisco from its suburbs, triggering a building boom of office towers, forever changing the scale of the City.
The Flood Building has stood next to the Powell Street cable car turntable since 1904. Gutted by fire in 1906, the interiors were soon rebuilt and remain virtually unchanged today from the days when Pinkerton Detective Agent Dashiell Hammett occupied an office here in the 1920s. Named for Comstock Lode silver king James Clair Flood and built by his son, it is still owned by the Flood family. Well worth a walk-through to experience what San Francisco offices were like a century ago.
Financial District/Jackson Sq.
Wall Street of the West – That’s the name given long ago to Montgomery Street, which intersects the California Street cable car line in the heart of the Financial District. This area features several generations of handsome office buildings and banking temples, from classic 1920s construction to the Transamerica Pyramid. Here’s a list of walking tours.
Jackson Square is the more recent name given to the oldest surviving neighborhood of buildings in San Francisco. Originally known as the Barbary Coast, where sailors were sometimes shanghaied from bars and brothels, the handsome brick buildings dating back as far as the 1850s miraculously escaped the 1906 fire that leveled everything else in this part of the City. They now house galleries, restaurants, and offices. Along Jackson Street just north of the Transamerica Pyramid, between Sansome and Columbus, four blocks north of the California Street cable line.
The San Francisco Historical Society operates a free museum in what originally served as the first branch US Mint, built in 1854 at 608 Commercial Street at Montgomery Street. Take a virtual tour of the museum. They offer many events and walking tours.
The free Wells Fargo History Museum chronicles the history of this legendary company. Artifacts include an original Concord stagecoach and a great deal of memorabilia covering the company’s early decades. Open Mondays-Fridays, 10 AM-5 PM (except bank holidays). 420 Montgomery Street, a half-block north of the California Street cable car line.
Waterfront
The Ferry Building was San Francisco’s front door for decades before bridges spanned the Bay. Ferries brought tens of thousands of daily passengers from the East Bay, where they were met by cable cars until 1906, then by electric streetcars. Celebrating its 125th anniversary, the 1898 structure is today one of the West Coast’s finest culinary marketplaces. Served directly by the vintage streetcars of Muni’s F-line, and two blocks east of the California Street cable line’s downtown terminal. Modern ferries to the East Bay and Marin counties leave from here, providing an inexpensive way to see the Bay.
San Francisco Railway Museum, a free attraction, celebrates the history of cable cars as well as electric streetcars, which have been an important part of San Francisco since 1892. An integrated gift shop features unique San Francisco transit merchandise, much of it available only at the museum and its online store, which also includes hard-to-find cable car books and genuine cable car track souvenirs. Open Tuesdays-Saturdays 10 AM-5 PM, 77 Steuart Street, across from the Ferry Building (at the Steuart St. F-line historic streetcar stop; two blocks from the Downtown terminal of the California Street cable line).
Vintage Ferries – Of the scores of ferryboats that plied San Francisco Bay in the early 20th Century, only a few survive. Eureka, built in 1890 and docked at the Hyde Street Pier in Fisherman’s Wharf, is preserved by the National Park Service, with all areas open to the public. Two other vintage ferries, adaptively reused as private offices, are just north of the Ferry Building. Both are required to allow public access to their top decks during business hours. Santa Rosa, built in 1927 and berthed at Pier 3, serves as headquarters for Hornblower Group, which provides cruises in many cities. Klamath, built in 1915, is berthed at Pier 9, as headquarters for the nonprofit Bay Area Council.
Pacific Heights
The Haas-Lilenthal House is San Francisco’s most ornate Victorian-era mansion open to the public. The Queen Anne style home was designated a National Treasure in 2012 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Owned by SF Heritage, it offers guided tours on Saturdays and Sundays at 12 Noon, 1 pm, and 2 pm. Walk one block uphill from the Van Ness Avenue terminal of the California cable line, turn right, and walk three blocks to 2007 Franklin Street. Here’s tour info and great interior pix.