San Francisco California Real Estate Agent |
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San Francisco CA Real Estate Agents |
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San Francisco, city in western
California, coextensive with San Francisco County. Famous for its beautiful setting, San Francisco is primarily located on the northern tip of a peninsula at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean on the west, the strait known as Golden Gate on the north, San Francisco Bay on the east, and San Bruno Mountain on the south. Alcatraz, Angel, Farallon, Treasure, and Yerba Buena islands are part of the city.San Francisco is a leading financial and international trade center for the western United States. The downtown financial district contains the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange; the headquarters of the 12th Federal Reserve District; and numerous banks and corporate office buildings, including the home office of the Bank of America, one of the largest banks in the world. Tourism is also important to the city’s economy. The San Francisco region is also home to many companies developing computer software and hardware. Several national apparel manufacturers also have headquarters in the city.
The port of San Francisco is one of the largest in the nation and its shipping activity has grown since the early 1980s. The city is served by San Francisco International Airport and by major railroads and highways. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system links the city with Oakland,
Richmond, Concord, and Fremont across San Francisco Bay. Oakland is also accessible via the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (opened 1936), one of the longest combination bridges in the world. The handsome Golden Gate Bridge (1937), with a central channel span of 4,200 feet, joins the city with Marin County, to the north.San Francisco has a land area of 46.7 square miles. The central part of the city lies on a series of hills that reach a maximum in altitude of about 935 feet. The most notable hills are Telegraph, Russian, Nob, Rincon, Lone Mountain, Bernal Heights, Larsen Peak, Twin Peaks, Potrero, Buena Vista Heights, Lincoln Heights, Mount Olympus, and Mount Davidson, the highest. The Embarcadero, a crescent-shaped boulevard, borders the edge of the peninsula; from it, Market Street, the principal thoroughfare, runs diagonally to the southwest, bisecting the city. North of Market Street are the main commercial sections of the city, and to the south are the older sections and industrial areas. Several of the city’s wealthier residential neighborhoods are situated on hills to the north and west of downtown; Nob Hill is one of the most well known. The Mission District, southwest of downtown, is primarily a Hispanic community, and much of the Western Addition, west of Van Ness Avenue, is a black neighborhood. Other major neighborhoods are Chinatown and Japantown.
The downtown section of San Francisco has many attractions. Particularly notable are the Transamerica Pyramid Building (1972), a white pyramid-shaped office tower; Chinatown, which has one of the largest Chinese communities outside Asia; the theater district along Geary Street; and Coit Memorial Tower on Telegraph Hill. Also downtown is picturesque Fisherman’s Wharf and the adjacent San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, with Hyde Street Pier, site of a number of historic ships, and the National Maritime Museum. The Civic Center includes City Hall, the War Memorial Opera House, and the Davies Symphony Hall. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is near the Yerba Buena Gardens, which houses a center dedicated to multicultural and experimental art. The downtown district of San Francisco is also noted for its cable cars, which were returned to operation in the mid-1980s after several years of repair. Located at the terminus of the Golden Gate Bridge are the Presidio, formerly a United States military reservation, now incorporated into Golden Gate National Recreation Area; and the Fort Point National Historic Site, encompassing a restored 1850s brick- and-granite fortification. Nearby is the California Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum, which contains a fine-arts collection. Golden Gate Park is the site of the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, noted for its exhibits of Far Eastern art; the California Academy of Sciences museum; and the Japanese Tea Garden. The Mexican Museum, which contains a folk-art collection, is one of four museums located in Fort Mason Center, northwest of downtown on San Francisco Bay. West of Fort Mason is the Palace of Fine Arts, the only building remaining of those constructed for the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in 1915 and currently the site of Exploratorium, an interactive science museum. South of downtown are Mission Dolores (founded 1776), located in San Francisco’s Mission district; the George Moscone Convention Center; and 3Com Park, home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team and the San Francisco 49ers football team.
The main institutions of higher education in San Francisco are San Francisco State University, the University of San Francisco, Golden Gate University, the
University of California-San Francisco, the New College of California, the University of California Hastings College of Law, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Academy of Art College, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a large community college. San Francisco has many performing-arts organizations. Among the best known are the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, and the American Conservatory Theater.The community was settled in 1776, when the Spanish officer Juan Bautista de Anza founded a fort (presidio) here to guard the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Later that year Father
Junípero Serra established nearby the Misión San Francisco de Asís (now called Mission Dolores). Little happened in either location, and in the 1830s a third settlement began at Yerba Buena Cove, near the present site of Portsmouth Square in the northeastern part of the city. The United States took Yerba Buena from Mexico in 1846, renaming it San Francisco in 1847. In 1848 gold was discovered in the interior of California, near Sacramento, and the ensuing gold rush rapidly transformed San Francisco into a booming community. San Francisco was incorporated as a city in 1850. The city developed as a port and supply point and became an early governmental and cultural center. It was noted for its cosmopolitan population and for the lawlessness of some sections, particularly the so-called Barbary Coast area. In 1869 the transcontinental railroad reached the Bay Area. By 1900 San Francisco had more than 340,000 inhabitants. On April 18, 1906, an earthquake shook the city and caused a fire that raged for three days, destroying almost all of San Francisco’s downtown and much of the residential area. The city was rebuilt quickly, and in 1915 it played host to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. In 1934 a strike by 12,000 San Francisco longshoremen spread to a dozen Pacific Coast cities and resulted in a three-day general strike that paralyzed the city. During World War II (1939-1945), San Francisco was a major shipbuilding center, and in 1945, at the end of the war, the city was the site of an international conference that drafted the charter of the United Nations. In the 1960s and 1970s many large, modern buildings were constructed in the city, and a number of residential areas were revitalized. In the late 1950s the literary development of the Beat Generation was centered in San Francisco’s North Beach area. The city was again badly damaged by an earthquake in 1989, but has since recovered. The city’s significant homosexual population has made it a center of gay civil rights activism since the 1970s.