The Old Mint - The Granite Lady

The Old Mint - The Granite Lady

Photo: tberning, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.

At Fifth and Mission Streets stands the Old Mint, a Greek Revival temple of money designed by Alfred B. Mullett. It began striking coins in 1874, when Nevada silver and California gold poured through San Francisco, and it is known as the Granite Lady.

When the fire surrounded it in April 1906, the mint held about $300 million in gold and silver, roughly a third of the nation's gold reserves. Superintendent Frank Leach and his staff, helped by a few soldiers, fought the flames for hours with water from a well in the courtyard. The mint survived, and for a time it served as the city's bank for relief money.

It stopped making coins in 1937. The city now owns the building and hopes to turn it into a museum; for now, view its columned portico from Mint Plaza or Fifth Street.

More on Wikipedia: San Francisco Mint · Alfred B. Mullett

Stops on this tour

  1. Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
  2. Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
  3. Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
  4. North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
  5. Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
  6. Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
  7. The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
  8. Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
  9. Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
  10. Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
  11. The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
  12. The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
  13. Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
  14. South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom