North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats

North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats

Photo: Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

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

North Beach got its name from a real beach: until Gold Rush landfill pushed the shore away, the bay reached nearly to this flat between Telegraph and Russian Hills. Chilean miners camped nearby in 1849, then came Irish families and, from the 1870s on, so many Italians that this became the city's Little Italy, home to fishermen, bakers and family restaurants. Above it, Telegraph Hill is named for a signal station built around 1849 that announced arriving ships to the merchants below.

After World War II, cheap rents and coffeehouses drew writers and poets. In the 1950s the Beat Generation, among them Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, made North Beach their home base, and the obscenity trial over Ginsberg's poem Howl became a landmark for free expression.

From Chinatown walk north on Grant Avenue or Columbus Avenue, about 10 minutes. The mini tour includes a steep climb and takes about 90 minutes.

Getting here: From Portsmouth Square, walk north on Kearny Street to Columbus Avenue and follow Columbus up to Washington Square, about 10 minutes.

Did you know?: Scenes from Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 silent epic The Ten Commandments were filmed at Saints Peter and Paul Church while it was still under construction.

Photo op: From the southwest corner of Washington Square, frame the white twin spires of Saints Peter and Paul Church with Coit Tower on the hill beyond.

More on Wikipedia: North Beach, San Francisco · Telegraph Hill, San Francisco · Beat Generation · Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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