Market Street then and now — the spine of the city.
Boundary between classes, nerve center during crisis and celebration
Let us begin by cursing Jasper O’Far-
rell for the traffic.
O’Farrell was the man who in 1847
decided that Market Street would bisect
a jagged grab bag of intersections, with
diagonal streets on one side not quite
lining up with the right-angled grid to
the south. (O’Farrell Street, not coinci-
dentally, is the worst offender.) May the
frustrated tears of generations of auto-
driving residents and tourists continue
to rain on his memory, in the future as
they have in the past.
Two of his other decisions, however,
were pretty spectacular: He created a
main thoroughfare that forged a
straight line from the water to Twin
Peaks, and he had the foresight —
when the city was home to fewer than
500 residents — to make his new bou-
levard a prairie-like 120 feet wide.
Frustration and beauty. That is the
definition of San Francisco and its main
artery. Both have reinvented themselves
repeatedly over the generations, usually
in concert. Market Street has been the
spine of the city, acting as a nerve cen-
ter during crisis, reflecting the growing
pains of the neighborhoods and inevita-
bly becoming the hub of any meaning-
ful celebration.
After the destruction of most of
Market Street by earthquake and fire in
1906 — Lotta’s Fountain on Market at
Geary and Kearny became the city’s
post-quake meeting point — it was
never a question that the street would
be rebuilt. Some businesses set up
tents or makeshift storefronts along
Market before the smoke had com-
pletely moments PresidentLet us cleared.beginin Theodoreearly with Marketa few RooseveltStreet spectacular history: visited
in celebration1903, and offerthe resultinga strong paradecase that and The
Chronicle’s Matier and Ross should
have been born 100 years earlier. The
police overtime alone could have filled
their column for weeks. (Among other
tone-deaf opulent touches in the work
ing-class town, Roosevelt was present
ed by the owners of The Chronicle with
a 12-inch-tall Champagne loving cup
made of solid gold.)
When megastar opera singer Luisa
Tetrazzini lost a court dispute with
promoter Oscar Hammerstein in 1910,
she performed a free open-air concert
for 250,000 on Market Street in front of
the old Chronicle building.
“When they told me I could not sing
in America unless it was for Hammer
stein, I said I would sing in the streets of
San Francisco, for I knew the streets of
San Francisco were free,” Tetrazzini
said. “I like San Francisco better than
any other city in the world.”
was In illuminated1916, a 1½-milein streetlights,stretch of Market becom
ing San Francisco’s first big public corri
dor brightened by electricity. The elo
quent prose in The Chronicle covering
the event could not have been more full
of wonder if the lamps had arrived by
Martian spaceship.
“A warm white light, the most bril
liant that ever shone through a city
thoroughfare, after the sun had gone
down, flooded the canyon of Market
Street from the ferry to Seventh Street,”
The Chronicle reported. “In this high tide
of light the stars disappeared, the fa
cades of buildings, never really seen
before, stood out sharp against the
night above.”
For decades before and after the
quake, Market Street was a dividing line
between the upper class to the diago
nal north and working class to the grid
dy south. The street itself was a demili
tarized zone in the earliest years where
both sides often met. An early 1900s
Chronicle article reports that “the dimes
and quarters” on the poorer side of the
street “were spent as freely as the dol
lars and gold pieces across the way.”
Skyscrapers brought the sweet
sounds of construction near Market in
the 1920s, then again in the 1960s and
early 1970s to less receptive ears. The
rise of the theater district in the first
half of the 20th century was another
memorable development, anchored to
the east by the 2,134-seat State Theatre
and the west by the 4,650-seat Fox.
Both were demolished in the early
1960s, the beginning of the end of that
great entertainment era.
City leaders steam-cleaned the
streets after that, but Market has al-
ways offered an honest reflection of
turbulence in San Francisco, losing its
luster when the city stumbles into hard
times. Chronicle columnist Charles
McCabe invoked the name of “The
Maltese Falcon” author Dashiell Ham-
mett in 1976, writing that “The old de-
tective would be horrified by this ‘Mar-
ket Street Beautification Project,’ which
is neither beautiful nor Market Street.”
Indeed, that late 1960s/early 1970s
beautification project and related BART
construction made it look as though a
giant plow horse had driven a furrow
through the busiest street in the city.
When those projects were finished, the
new Market looked like an impostor to
longtime residents, who didn’t recognize
the corridor where they had paraded
with Santa Claus, watched Walt Disney
movies and strolled as youngsters with-
out fear.
But Market Street had been to hell
and back before, and the 21st century
has arguably brought another upswing.
Twitter and Autodesk are among the
companies plotting the future on Mar-
ket Street. A strip club closes in one old
cinema, and a live theater company
makes plans to restore another. And
then there’s the stroll test; we’ve once
again reached the point where a walk
from the Ferry Building to City Hall is
becoming a pleasant alternative to
public transit.
Like its citizenry, Market Street has
become adept at recycling and rein-
vention. The Warfield now thrives as a
concert hall, and the Golden Gate The-
atre and the Orpheum bring Broadway
entertainment to the Bay Area. The first
signs of opulence on Market Street
were the 1800s hotels — including the
Palace (a water closet in every room!),
the Grand Hotel and the Baldwin. Now
the Four Seasons, one of the most
splendorous big hotels in the city, is not
only on Market but on what used to be
the “dimes and quarters” side of the
street.
With new condos opening by the
hundreds South of Market, the Warriors
joining the Giants on the waterfront and
plans for Bayview redevelopment under
way, the dividing line of Market Street
becomes a little more hazy. A three-
bedroom condo in SoMa can top $2
million. Where exactly is the “bad” part
of town?
A few signs of the past remain,
though, and hopefully always will. The
Ferry Building, restaurant options and a
few very good saloons are pretty much
a lock for eternal survival near Market
Street. Residents make less eye contact
now, but they still gather along Market
for New Year’s Eve, World Series pa-
rades and S.F. Pride celebrations. There
still hasn’t been a match for Luisa Tet-
razzini’s performance, but U2 at Justin
Herman Plaza in 1987 arguably came
close — at least in terms of crowd size
and fervor.
As for Jasper O’Farrell, he died like
many did in 1875: suddenly and young.
“He had just sat down after taking a
drink with the actor (John) McCabe,
when he fell into a doze, and a peculiar
gurgling sound proceeded from his
throat,” The Chronicle reported of his
passing at age 58. “The barkeep and
others loosened his collar and necktie,
but he died before medical aid could be
summoned.”
From that tavern, on Hardie Place at
Kearny, he had a pretty good diagonal
view of Market. One final look at the
street that defines its city.
Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco
Chronicle’s pop culture critic. E-mail:
phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter:
@PeterHartlaub
“A warm white
light, the most
brilliant that ever
shone through a
city thoroughfare,
after the sun had
gone down, flood-
ed the canyon
of Market Street
from the ferry to
Seventh Street.”
1916 Chronicle report