South Park, San Francisco
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other meanings, see South Park (disambiguation).
South Park is a small neighborhood in the South of Market area in San Francisco, California. Similarly named are South Park, a local park, and South Park Street, which circles the oval-shaped park.
The two halves of the street re-join at the end of the park, and continue for a short stretch before connecting to Second and Third Streets between Bryant and Brannan. This creates a curved line of buildings which gives the street and park an unusual enclosed, urban character. Local businesses and restaurants dot the street, as well as a large number of apartment buildings.
The area was a center of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, with many start-up Internet companies based in the area. By late 2001, however, many of these companies had closed their doors. Yet, as of 2006, in an era for the Internet that some have dubbed Web 2.0, South Park has once again become home to many small Web-related companies. [1]
Recently, some neighbors in South Park have expressed opposition to a proposal to put an above-ground stop on the Central Subway at the southwestern end of South Park Street, on Third Street. Final routing of the line has not yet been decided by the Municipal Transportation Agency, but will likely be along Fourth Street, one block further west.
South Park is located between the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (Interstate 80) and AT&T Park, the city's baseball stadium. The numbered streets are one-way, and carry traffic to and from the bridge, the stadium, and Interstate 280, which terminates slightly to the south of the neighborhood.
[edit] Neighbors
Wired magazine is headquartered in a building half a block from South Park, overlooking the park at Third and Bryant. Website development pioneer Organic Inc. was in this same building until 2001.
The professional baseball stadium AT&T Park (formerly Pacific Bell Park, then SBC Park) in which the San Francisco Giants baseball team plays is two blocks south and east of South Park.
Moscone Center, San Francisco's main convention facility, is four blocks north and west of South Park.
[edit] History
The park was originally constructed as the center of an exclusive residential community. Glamorous townhouses and mansions encircled the park until the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, when most of the homes around the Rincon Hill area were destroyed. The oval park, however, has remained unchanged and is still a central meeting point in the area.
