South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom
Photo: Meiko21 (talk), CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.
South of Market Street, the Gold Rush city's elite first built mansions on Rincon Hill and around South Park. In 1869 the Second Street cut sliced through the hill, the wealthy moved to Nob Hill, and the district became the city's industrial heart, with foundries, rail yards, warehouses and boarding houses for sailors, seasonal workers and immigrants. People called it South of the Slot, after the cable car slot in Market Street.
The 1906 earthquake hit SoMa hard. Much of it stood on filled marsh and creek beds, and buildings collapsed before the fire swept through. After World War II many residents were older single men in cheap hotels, and a long fight over redevelopment displaced many of them to build the convention center and Yerba Buena Gardens. Filipino families, artists, nightclubs and, from the 1990s, internet startups have each shaped it since.
Take BART or Muni Metro to Powell or Montgomery Station. The mini tour ends near the Ferry Building and takes about 90 minutes.
Getting here: From Civic Center, ride BART or Muni Metro two stops to Powell Station and walk three blocks to Yerba Buena Gardens, or walk east along Market Street, about 25 minutes.
Did you know?: At the time of the 1906 earthquake, the Old Mint at Fifth and Mission Streets held about a third of the gold reserves of the United States.
Photo op: Stand on the main lawn of Yerba Buena Gardens to frame the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial waterfall with downtown towers rising behind it.
More on Wikipedia: South of Market, San Francisco · Rincon Hill, San Francisco · Yerba Buena Gardens
Stops on this tour
- Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
- Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
- Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
- North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
- Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
- Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
- The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
- Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
- Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
- Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
- The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
- The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
- Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
- South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom