San Francisco - Market Street

Impressive Market Street, one of the few thoroughfares to cut diagonally across the grid-iron pattern of San Francisco's streets, forms the boundary between the poorer south of the city and the more well-to-do north.

This division has its origin in the urban plan drawn up in 1847 by the engineer Jasper O'Farrell at the behest of the military authorities. O'Farrell proposed two distinct networks of streets, one of relatively narrow streets and smaller blocks to the north, the other with wider streets (15ft/5m wider than in the north) and correspondingly larger blocks to be built on what was then marshland to the south. Market Street, separating them, was planned as a boulevard almost 130ft/40m wide. Because the two networks do not coincide, getting from a point south of Market Street to a destination north of it, or vice versa, can be quite tricky even today. Streets on both sides are numbered starting from Market Street and those that cross Market Street undergo a change of direction. It is a standing joke among San Franciscans that "no street has so many crossings and so little hope of getting across".

Redevelopment

Of the districts on either side of Market Street it was those to the south with the wider streets which fell upon the hardest times. To reverse this trend and prevent the spread of urban blight to northern districts, the complete redevelopment of Market Street was decided upon. Between 1964 and 1979 more than $50m was ploughed into its revitalization, in the process of which the street has been transformed, at least from the Ferry Building to Powell Street. Trees have been planted, the sidewalks repaved in red stone, bus shelters erected and the whole appearance altered by the construction of numerous skyscrapers. Beyond Powell Street the development plan, brainchild of the architect John Carl Warnecke, has yet to achieve the desired results.

Surroundings

At the southwest end of Market Street lies Twin Peaks, at the northeast end Embarcadero Plaza and the Ferry Building on San Francisco Bay. Where Powell Street leaves Market Street, on the left is the southern cable car turntable. Behind it rise the 46-storey San Francisco Hilton, completed in 1971, with a viewing platform 492ft/150m up, and the Parc Fifty Five Hotel, opened in 1984.

North beyond the cable car turntable stands the Westin St Francis Hotel built in 1904. Its 335ft/120m-high tower with a panoramic view added in 1972. Union Square is off to the right.