Tag: History
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Little Puffer
San Francisco Zoo At the area between Grizzly Gulch and The South American Area Little Puffer is believed to have been built by the Cagney Brothers’ Miniature Railroad Company around 1904. Herbert Fleishhacker purchased the train in 1925 and installed it at the new Herbert Fleishhacker Zoo, where it remained for 53 years. The history of Little…
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Mining Exchange
350 Bush Financial District The history of the Mining Exchange can be read here, as this is a follow up post regarding the “historic restoration” of the building that took place in 2018. The City of San Francisco has a policy that allows developers to put up a history vignette in place of actual historical…
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Chinatown Public Library
1135 Powell Street Chinatown The Chinatown Branch of the San Francisco Public Library started its life as the North Beach Branch. It was changed in 1958. Andrew Carnegie left the City of San Francisco, then under Mayor James Phelan, $750,000 for a main library and branches. One half was for the main library and the…
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Compton’s Cafeteria
Corner of Turk and Taylor Tenderloin Funny how a plaque can stop you and educate you about something you may have known nothing about, and at the exact same time leave out so very very much of the story. If you were to hear about this event during those times you would have been told that…
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Minerva
California State Capital Senate Chambers According to ancient Roman myth, the goddess Minerva was born fully grown. Just as Minerva was born fully grown, so California became a state without first having been a territory. Minerva’s image on the Great Seal symbolizes California’s direct rise to statehood. Minerva originally was in both chambers but…
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Wally Heider Recording Studio
245 Hyde Street The Tenderloin The blue building hidden behind this tree (the fourth film vault) has a prominent place in San Francisco Music history as well. In early 1969, Wally Heider opened the San Francisco Wally Heider’s Studio at 245 Hyde Street. Heider had reportedly apprenticed as an assistant and mixer at United Western Recorders in Hollywood, CA,…
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Guglielmo Marconi Memorial
Lombard Avenue On the drive up to Coit Tower North Beach This memorial to Guglielmo Marconi was placed sometime in 1938-1939. A group called the Marconi Memorial Foundation incorporated in the 1930s for the purpose of enshrining Marconi as the inventor of the wireless (a fact contested by the Russians). They placed two memorials…
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Fishermen’s and Seamen’s Chapel
Fisherman’s Wharf Pier 45 Inner Harbor Built in 1979, this charming little chapel is a memorial to the memory of Bay Area fishermen who’ve lost their lives at sea. It’s also something of a touchstone for San Francisco’s mostly Italian, mostly Roman Catholic fishing community, which traces its origins to Sicilian immigrants from the early…
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The Hayward/Kohl Building
400 Montgomery Street Financial District The Hayward/Kohl Building was designed by Percy & Polk (George Percy and Willis Polk both of whom have been written about on this site many times before) for Alvinza Hayward. Hayward made his fortune from the Eureka Gold Mine in California and the Comstock Silver Mine in Nevada as well as investments in timber, coal,…
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245 Market Standing As A Remembrance of Skyscrapers of Old
245 Market Street Financial District / Embarcadero The seventeen story Pacific Gas and Electric Company General Office Building, designed by Bakewell & Brown and built between 1923 and 1925, is one of a series of skyscrapers built during the 1910s and 1920s which imparted to San Francisco its downtown character. This character of large ornamented classic buildings…
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Embarcadero Interpretive Signage and Walkway
The Embarcadero Waterfront Transportation Project Historic and Interpretive Signage Program * * * * * This interpretive signage program was created in 1996 and covers 2.5 miles of the Embarcadero. The project includes 22, 13 foot high posts, vertical history stations and bronze inlays. these metal black-and-white-striped pylons are imprinted with photographs, stories, poetry in…