Since moving into the City, I’ve made it a habit to rehearse the order of the names of the streets as I go places. Despite them being literally next door, I still get Greenwich and Filbert mixed up. They both have stairs up Telegraph Hill. Filbert is more famous, probably because it is a bit nicer. Greenwich is closer to our place on Lombard.
After Filbert, heading into (what we still call) the Financial District, there is Union, Green, Vallejo and Broadway.
Today Sepi and I walked to our dentist, who is at 450 Sutter. Once on the downtown grid, every corner can be a choice as the distances all come out the same. Some blocks go up hills, though, so generally we go down Sansome for a while to get around the shoulder of Telegraph Hill. Whether the day is warm or cool often determines which side of the street we walk on. Today, before the low clouds burned off, we turned up Washington to skirt (what is still called) the Transamerica Building then going down Montgomery to Sacramento then Grant then Sutter.
What is really interesting to me now are the alleys.
Maiden Lane by Union Square is (or was) famous. Hotaling Place is lesser known but has a cool 1906 story. Leidesdorff Street has a nice mural.
Today, walking towards home on Grant, we saw an alley with no sign. Down at the end was a sign for a restaurant: The Irish Bank. Around the corner, I spied the other end of the alley – it takes a turn at the restaurant – which was named Mark Lane. Is it Mark Lane all the way through? No, according to Google Maps, the other part is Harlan Place. We asked at the restaurant but they didn’t know.
Another block farther on, we walked down Belden Place, which sported at least a half dozen restaurants in its single block. Pretty busy, too, at lunch hour. I’ve never even heard of Belden Place before today.
Many of the streets we walked on today I have driven on but we really enjoy going slow and looking at everything: the buildings entrances and decorations, the store windows, the people. I got a book once from the library that talked about all the San Francisco street names and how they got that way but it works better for me to do it organically. If I stand in a place and know the history, I can remember it better. It’s not as much fun to just jam facts into my brain to be spewed forth later.
Our (try to be) daily walks are often out on the Embarcadero. Certain places on the Embarcadero have brass plaques in the sidewalk with stories about the intersecting streets.
Francisco, Chestnut, Lombard, Greenwich, Filbert, Union . . .
Going the other way: Battery, Sansome, Montgomery, Kearney, Grant, Stockton, Powell, Mason, Taylor . . .
I’ve got to keep at it!
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Addendum: We went out onto the Embarcadero today and I got a picture of one of the plaques I was talking about. It was for Green Street. There are actually six plaques set into the sidewalk. The top two show the name of the street and the direction to it from where we are standing.
The middle two show an image of Mr Green and tell Mr Green’s story. It basically says Mr Green was actually someone else with another name.
At the bottom is a final word. The seagull shit is such a San Francisco touch!
Hi Chris- I believe that 450 Sutter has the loveliest lobby in all of SF. I went there as a girl many times, but could not appreciate it due to old-fashioned-dentist-terror. I think walking will keep you alive.
Indeed. It’s funny. the times we’ve been there, we just rushed through the lobby. I’ll give a better look next time.
A lot of those older office buildings have cool lobbies. It’s one of the things we’ve been enjoying in our walks.