Jackson Square - The Brick Survivors
Photo: Dreamyshade, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.
Walk the 400 block of Jackson Street and you are among the oldest commercial buildings in the city. These two- and three-story brick blocks went up in the 1850s and 1860s for importers, bankers and merchants, when the waterfront was only a block or two away. Unlike most of downtown, many of them survived the 1906 earthquake and fire.
The Hotaling buildings, at 445 to 473 Jackson, held a whiskey warehouse. A favorite local story says the liquor was spared while churches burned, and a plaque nearby carries Charles K. Field's teasing verse asking why heaven would save the whiskey. In truth, crews pumping seawater from the bay helped hold the fire back from this corner of the old waterfront.
In 1971 the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Step into Hotaling Place, the narrow lane beside the warehouse, and picture ships tied up at its foot.
More on Wikipedia: Jackson Square, San Francisco · Anson Parsons Hotaling
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