Filbert Steps - Gardens on the Cliff
Photo: Dan Dascalescu, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.
Leave the tower by the Filbert Steps, which drop down the hill's steep east face toward the Embarcadero. This side of Telegraph Hill was quarried in the 1800s for rock used as ballast and landfill, which left cliffs where streets could not go, so residents got stairs and footpaths instead.
Along the way you pass small wooden cottages tucked into lush gardens. Much of the greenery traces to Grace Marchant, a former Hollywood stuntwoman who began turning a dump beside the steps into a garden in 1949 and tended it for decades; the garden carries her name. Napier Lane, a wooden boardwalk off the steps, is one of the city's last plank streets.
Listen for loud squawking. The wild parrots of Telegraph Hill, a flock descended from escaped or released pets, often feed in the trees here. The houses are private, so stay on the steps.
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