Western Addition, San Francisco, California

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A southern view from Alta Plaza Park, which is in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. Most of the valley in the central part of this image is in the Western Addition neighborhood. In the background on the right can be seen Sutro Tower, which is west of Twin Peaks. The darker hill to the left and slightly more in the foreground is Buena Vista Heights, which is directly south of Haight Street (between the Haight-Fillmore and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods). Cathedral Hill is visible to the left, just west of Van Ness Avenue and north of Hayes Valley.

The Western Addition is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Historically, it was an addition to the city west of Van Ness Avenue sandwiched between the Upper and Lower Haight neighborhoods and Pacific Heights.

The area was first developed around the turn of the 20th century as a middle-class suburb served by cable cars. Aside from Hayes Valley, it survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake with its Victorian-style buildings largely intact. Today, the term Western Addition is generally used in two ways: to denote the development's original geographic area, and to denote the eastern portion of the neighborhood (also called the Fillmore District) that was redeveloped in the 1950s.

Those who use the term in the former sense generally consider its (relatively ill-defined) boundaries to be Van Ness Avenue on the east, Masonic Avenue on the west, Post Street on the north, and Oak Street on the south. From there, it is often divided into smaller neighborhoods such as Japantown, The Fillmore, Hayes Valley, Lower Pacific Heights, North Panhandle, Cathedral Hill, Alamo Square, and Anza Vista.

After the Second World War, the Western Addition — particularly the Fillmore District — became a population base and a cultural center for San Francisco's African American community. Since then, urban renewal schemes and San Francisco's changing demographics have led to major changes in the economic and ethnic makeup of the neighborhood, as the Fillmore District suffered from crime and poverty while many other districts underwent significant gentrification. Today, many areas of the neighborhood are again solidly middle-class.

The Central Freeway used to run through the neighborhood to Turk Street, but that section of the freeway was closed immediately after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and later demolished.

The neighborhood has a population of 5,257 and is 27.3% White or Caucasian, 50.5% Black or African American, 13.9% Asian, 0.3% Native American, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 5.2% from two or more races and 2.6% from other races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.1% of the population. 17.7% of families and 21.5% of the population were below the poverty line.