Market Street, San Francisco, California

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An F Market streetcar turns around at the foot of Market Street, in front of the Ferry Building.

Another view of Market Street in downtown San Francisco, taken near the intersection with Montgomery Street, looking northeast towards the Ferry Building.

Market Street is a major street and important thoroughfare in San Francisco, California. It begins at The Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building at the northeastern edge of the city and runs southwest through downtown, past the Civic Center and the Castro District, to the intersection with Corbett Avenue in the Twin Peaks neighborhood. At this point, the roadway continues as Portola Drive until it terminates in the southwestern quadrant of San Francisco.

Market Street serves as the terminus for all intersecting streets in the downtown area: named streets are to the north and west of Market Street, and numbered streets run to its south and east. Similarly, streets starting on the southeast side of Market Street are generally perpendicular to Market Street versus the streets starting on the northwest as Market Street forms a "diagonal" to the layout of the rest of San Francisco.

Market Street is a major transit artery for the city of San Francisco, and has carried in turn horse-drawn streetcars, cable cars, electric streetcars, electric trolleybuses and diesel buses. Today Muni's buses, trolleybuses and heritage streetcars (on the F Market line) share the street, while below the street the two-level Market Street Subway carries Muni Metro and BART. While cable cars no longer operate on Market Street, cars of the San Francisco cable car system terminate to the side of the street at the intersections with California Street and Powell Street.

Long described as San Francisco's Fifth Avenue, its Champs-Élysées, its Main Street, Great White Way or Path of Gold, Market Street serves as a major street for downtown San Francisco.

[edit] History

Market Street cuts across the city for three miles from the waterfront to the hills of Twin Peaks. It was laid out originally by Jasper O'Farrell, a 26-year old trained civil engineer, who emigrated to Yerba Buena. Yerba Buena was later renamed San Francisco in 1846 when the town was captured by Americans as a result of the Mexican-American War. O'Farrell first repaired the original layout of the settlement around Portsmouth Square and then established Market Street the widest street in town, as an arrow aimed straight at Los Pechos de la Choca, the Breasts of the Maiden, now called Twin Peaks. Writing in Forgotten Pioneers, T.F. Pendergast wrote,

"When the engineer had completed his map of Market Street and the southern part of the city, what was regarded as the abnormal width of the proposed street excited part of the populace, and an indignation meeting was held to protest against the plan as wanton disregard for rights of landowners; and the mob, for such it was, decided for lynch law. A friend warned O'Farrell, before the crowd had dispersed. He rode with all haste to North Beach, took a boat for Sausalito, and thence put distance behind him on fast horses in relay until he reached his retreat in Sonoma. He found it discreet to remain some time in the country before venturing to return to the city."

At the time, the right of way of Market Street was blocked by a sixty foot sand dune, at the location of the Palace Hotel now, and a hundred yards further west stood a sand hill nearly ninety feet tall. The city soon filled in the ground between Portsmouth Square and Happy Valley at First and Mission and the dunes were leveled and the sand used for fill.

Market Street parades have long ascribed significance to global events, such as the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the Preparedness Day bombing of 1917. The parade of the influenza masked revelers of the first Armistice Day, and the 1934 general strike that paralyzed the ports of the Pacific Coast, the end of World War II. In the days of the first United Nations conferences, Eden, Molotov, Stettinius, and Bidault sped up Market street, waving to the crowds of hopefuls.