Cable Car Powerhouse & Museum: The Moving National Landmark

Why is it significant?

Finish your walking tour inside the brick threshold of the Cable Car Barn and Powerhouse at Mason and Washington Streets.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Finish your walking tour inside the brick threshold of the Cable Car Barn and Powerhouse at Mason and Washington Streets. Look down from the mezzanine railing into the roaring subterranean machinery hall: four massive fourteen-foot motorized winding wheels spin endlessly, pulling miles of thick steel cable beneath the streets of San Francisco at a steady nine point five miles per hour!

Scottish engineer Andrew Smith Hallidie invented the cable car in eighteen seventy-three after watching a heavily loaded horse-drawn carriage slide backward down a steep cobblestone hill in the rain, killing five exhausted horses. Determined to end animal cruelty, Hallidie designed an underground wire rope gripped by a mechanical grip beneath the wooden car.

San Francisco's cable cars are the only manually operated cable car transit system left in the world and the only moving National Historic Landmark in the United States! Notice the wooden brake pads made of solid California white oak: when the gripman pulls the brake lever, you can smell sweet roasted oak smoke as the wood presses directly against the steel rails.

Step outside onto the sidewalk as a vintage car clangs its bell down the hill. You have experienced the resilient, rebellious, and golden heart of San Francisco.