From sandlot to thriving hub
Now a destination for tourists and high-end shoppers, Union Square has gone through some rough patches
Union Square was presented as a gift, but it seemed like more of an insult.
Col. John White Geary, later the first mayor of San Francisco, in 1849 donated 3 acres of windswept and flea-ridden sand dunes to the city. There was almost no recreation, and just a few tents. For years, no one bothered to give the space a name.
“On maps made in the early 1850s the vacant sand waste is merely marked ‘Public Square,’ ” The Chronicle reported
years later.
Union Square is the Horatio Alger story of San Francisco neighborhoods, an undesirable scrub of land that through determination and marketing genius became a high-end retail center, tourism mecca and movie location favorite.
Chronicle readers may remember a rough patch for the square in the 1970s and 1980s; some may even remember shopping in the less congested area before the 1940s parking garage was built. But the past 100 years of change amount to small tweaks, after the big--
gest makeover in San Francisco history. In a city where most public spaces have interesting past lives, Union Square’s story might be the best.
Union Square has a quarry-like feel now, surrounded on all sides by tall buildings that alternately project grand history or the sleek future. But it began as a Mad Max-style wasteland, used as a dumping site. Sand dunes caused natural detours in the street grids, and the few squatters who lived nearby paid no attention to the boundaries. Later, some of the houses in the area had to be destroyed, because
they were built in the middle of a street.
The land was designated as a park in 1855, and the sand hills were leveled off for a recreation field, where the city’s first class of hardscrabble baseball players learned the game. According to historian E.G. Fitzhamon in a Sept. 21, 1928, Chronicle article, the term “sand lot baseball” came from those Union Square games.
Fitzhamon wrote: “One grand feature of that early Union Square baseball must have been that there were no windows to break and extremely few near-enough houses from which, with the score tied in the eighth, could issue the authoritative maternal clarion cry of ‘Jim-mee-ee! Come home — I need you!’ ”
Union Square was named in the 1860s, reportedly after supporters of the Civil War who met in the park for pro- Union rallies, although there’s no newspaper record of that. Several large churches emerged around the square, along with a few small mansions. In a short period from the early 1850s to 1870, Union Square transformed dramatically, from a scrubby patch of land to the premier meeting place for the working class. Chronicle ads in the early 1870s are filled with notices of bands playing at the square, dignitaries meeting there and public feasts at low cost.
The park was bustling, but little about it was grand or dashing. Three major structures helped shape Union Square as we know it today:
In 1896, the City of Paris department store built a Beaux Arts building at Geary and Stockton. It provided the first major retail anchor for the square, offered architectural panache that set the tone for the future, and helped give the square its high-end cachet.
In 1903, the Dewey Monument was completed, adding a spire with the 9foot-tall Goddess of Victory at the top, and a much needed centerpiece for the park. The monument celebrates Admiral George Dewey’s naval victory during the Spanish-American War, which freed the Philippines from Spanish rule.
1 In 1904, the St. Francis Hotel was finished, creating a regal wall on the Powell Street side of the square. St. Francis chef
Victor Hirtzler added excellent food to Union Square’s reputation for the finer things.
The St. Francis, gutted by fire during the 1906 earthquake but quickly restored, brought a celebrity cachet to Union Square. Several presidents stayed there, including Theodore Roosevelt. The diverse group of guests in the early 20th century included William Jennings Bryan, Helen Keller and Charlie Chaplin. Fatty Arbuckle was acquitted in 1922 of rape and manslaughter charges after the death of actress Virginia Rappe at the St. Francis — the jury sent him a note of apology when it was done — but the silent film star and the hotel will forever be linked by the scandal.
As the department stores multiplied in to the area — I. Magnin with its white marble palace, Saks and later Macy’s — Union Square experienced more makeovers and plastic surgeries than its richest clientele. The biggest physical change yet arrived in the 1940s, when an enormous underground garage was completed, cementing the square’s destiny as a perpetually crowded tourist center, and one of the better people-watching sites in the world.
Chronicle columnist Herb Caen had a love/hate relationship with the site and its pigeons, although he liked Alfred Hitchcock enough to pose for a 1963 photo where both were swarmed by the birds; Union Square appeared in the opening sequence of Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
In 1975, Caen distributed “Herb Caen Fallout Shelters” in the Square — parasols meant to save passers-through from the pigeon excrement problem. (And now we know what Caen would do about the seagull problem at AT&T Park.)
Robert Shields’ mime work in Union Square in the early 1970s launched the dancer’s career, and was followed by an explosion of amateur mime work in the park. (“The bad mimes put the good mimes out of business,” Shields told me in 2006.) Shields and his partner Lorene Yarnell married in the square in 1972, in a mimed ceremony.
The sights and sounds of the park were a star in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film “The Conversation”; a riveting and pivotal opening sequence features Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest walking through a crowded Union Square. The following year, the Golden State Warriors, relocated to Oakland, celebrated their NBA championship in Union Square.
The late 1970s brought a seedier crowd to Union Square, or at least that was the opinion of the politicians and the media. At one point in 1979, Mayor Di- anne Feinstein invited the press to watch her shop in Union Square, to prove that conditions were improving and the park was safe.
“Hey, Dianne,” one elderly man rasped as she walked by. “The park is nice and clean today. You should see it on the days that you’re not here.”
A bigger controversy was the demolition of City of Paris, replaced in 1979 by Neiman Marcus, which kept the old retailer’s atrium dome featuring a stained glass ship. Give credit to Chronicle reporter Beth Trier for this: On the day Neiman Marcus opened, she asked general manager Norbert Stanislav about the nickname “Needless Markup.” (While I doubt it’s his country of origin, I’m imagining his response in a thick French accent.)
“That’s totally unfounded,” Stanislav said. “If our merchandise is competitive, so must our prices be.”
Neiman Marcus continues to thrive, and recent changes have solidified the square as an upscale, tourist-friendly center. Nike-Town and the Apple Store are sleek new anchors. The Westin St. Francis built a larger bank of rooms in the back of the original hotel. Macy’s is a dominant tenant to the south, capable of rolling out a six-story banner of David Beckham posing in his briefs.
Think about that, San Franciscans. From a flea-infested patch of nothing to the place that David Beckham chooses to sell his underwear. Anything is possible in this town. Know that to be true.