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    Look Up, San Francisco! A Walking Tour of the Financial District
    Look Up, San Francisco! A Walking Tour of the Financial District
    Look Up, San Francisco! A Walking Tour of the Financial District
    Ebook35 pages26 minutes

    Look Up, San Francisco! A Walking Tour of the Financial District

    By Doug Gelbert

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Much of today’s Financial District was under water during Spanish and Mexican rule. The Bay shoreline originally ended at Battery Street but with the American annexation and the California Gold Rush about five blocks worth of new city ground was created all the way to the Embarcadero. Sand hills as tall as ten men once stood here and they were leveled and the sand used for fill. Gold Rush money quickly made this area the financial capital of the West and the coast’s first and only skyscrapers began poking up along Market Street by the end of the 19th century.

    The neighborhood was completely destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. Rebuilding was rapid and generally adhered to a few guiding principles. The Neoclassical style championed by the City Beautiful movement sweeping American cities in the first decades of the 1900s made it the design of choice for most San Francisco architects. And earthquake wariness typically kept the banks and corporate headquarters to between 15 and twenty stories at the most.

    By mid-century technology for earthquake-proofing buildings caused height restrictions to be repealed and builders in the Financial District reached for the sky with a vengeance. So many skyscrapers went up that San Franciscans began to despair over the “Manhattanization” of their city. Steel and glass canyon walls obscured heritage structures in some cases and wiped them off the streetscape altogether in others.

    The pendulum has since swung back and strict, European-style height restrictions are once again shaping the Financial District. Our tour to explore the last century of development around the “Wall Street of the West” will begin on one of the world’s great thoroughfares, Market Street, at a landmark where survivors of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire gathered to take stock of the devastation and look towards the future...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDoug Gelbert
    Release dateJun 22, 2012
    ISBN9781476043661
    Look Up, San Francisco! A Walking Tour of the Financial District

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      Book preview

      Look Up, San Francisco! A Walking Tour of the Financial District - Doug Gelbert

      A Walking Tour of San Francisco – Financial District

      a walking tour in the Look Up, America series from walkthetown.com

      by Doug Gelbert

      published by Cruden Bay Books at Smashwords

      Copyright 2012 by Cruden Bay Books

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.

      Much of today’s Financial District was under water during Spanish and Mexican rule. The Bay shoreline originally ended at Battery Street but with the American annexation and the California Gold Rush about five blocks worth of new city ground was created all the way to the Embarcadero. Sand hills as tall as ten men once stood here and they were leveled and the sand used for fill. Gold Rush money quickly made this area the financial capital of the West and the coast’s first and only skyscrapers began poking up along Market Street by the end of the 19th century.

      The neighborhood was completely destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. Rebuilding was rapid and generally adhered to a few guiding principles. The Neoclassical style championed by the City Beautiful movement sweeping American cities in the first decades of the 1900s made it the design of choice for most San Francisco architects. And earthquake wariness typically kept the banks and corporate headquarters to between 15 and twenty stories at the most.

      By mid-century technology for earthquake-proofing buildings caused height restrictions to be repealed and builders in the Financial District reached for the sky with a vengeance. So many skyscrapers went up that San Franciscans began to despair over the Manhattanization of their city. Steel and glass canyon walls obscured heritage structures in some cases and wiped them off the streetscape altogether in others.

      The pendulum has since swung back and strict, European-style height restrictions are once again shaping the Financial District. Our tour to explore the last century of development around the "Wall Street of

      Enjoying the preview?
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