Barbary Coast & Secret Chinatown: Gold Rush Saloons, Cable Cars, and Dragon Alleys
From 1849 buried ships and Gold Rush bank vaults to the incense-filled alleys of North America's oldest Chinatown
San Francisco · 7 stops · 10 min audio · Generated
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1. Ferry Building & The Embarcadero: Portal to the Golden State
1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA 94111
Stand right here on the Embarcadero promenade facing the grand neoclassical facade of the San Francisco Ferry Building, feeling the cool saltwater breeze sweeping off San Francisco Bay. Look up at the two-hundred-and-forty-five-foot stone clock tower: modeled after the Giralda bell tower of Seville, this iconic clock has struck the hours since eighteen ninety-eight.
Before the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge were built in the nineteen thirties, this building was the second busiest transit terminal on Earth, surpassed only by London's Charing Cross. Up to fifty thousand commuters and travelers arrived here daily by wooden ferry boats from Oakland and across the bay, passing beneath soaring skylit second-floor nave arcades.
On the terrible morning of April eighteenth, nineteen zero six, a catastrophic seven point nine magnitude earthquake shattered San Francisco, igniting citywide fires that raged for four days. While eighty percent of the city burned to ashes, the Ferry Building's resilient steel frame and water proximity saved it from destruction, serving as the sole evacuation lifeline for thousands of refugees.
Walk west into the Financial District toward the towering spire of the Transamerica Pyramid.
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2. Transamerica Pyramid & Redwood Park: The Forest in the Financial Canyon
600 Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94111
Step off Montgomery Street into the quiet shade of Redwood Park, directly beneath the soaring eastern concrete wing of the Transamerica Pyramid. Look up into the canopy of fifty mature coastal redwood trees: these giants were transplanted here in nineteen seventy-two from the Santa Cruz Mountains, creating a serene primeval forest in the heart of high-rise skyscrapers.
Look up eight hundred and fifty-three feet to the pyramid's spire. When architect William Pereira unveiled his futuristic design in nineteen sixty-nine, critics violently denounced it, calling it a monstrosity and an arrogant needle. But Pereira chose the pyramid shape for a brilliant practical reason: unlike rectangular towers that cast pitch-black shadows across narrow streets, the tapered form allows natural sunlight and fresh air to reach the street canyons below.
Beneath your shoes lies buried Gold Rush history: Montgomery Street was the original shoreline in eighteen forty-nine. Deep under the foundations of this pyramid lies the buried timber hull of the whaling ship Niantic, abandoned by its crew who rushed to the gold fields.
Stroll into the historic brick alleyways of Jackson Square.
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3. Jackson Square Historic District: The 1850s Brick Survivors
Jackson St & Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94111
Walk along the tree-shaded brick sidewalks of Jackson Street and examine the heavy iron shutters flanking the windows of these handsome two-story brick rowhouses. You are standing inside Jackson Square, the sole surviving collection of commercial buildings from the Gold Rush era that survived the catastrophic nineteen zero six earthquake and firestorm.
In the eighteen fifties, this was the financial heart of San Francisco. Gold miners fresh from the Sierra Nevada foothills rushed into these very buildings with pouches of gold dust. Look at number four hundred and seventy-two: it was the Bank of Lucas, Turner and Company, managed by future Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, who slept in an iron-shuttered upstairs room.
When the inferno of nineteen zero six swept downhill toward these streets, Italian-American wine merchants and naval sailors fought back with water pumped from naval tugboats and barrels of red wine from the nearby Italian-Swiss Colony cellars, dousing the brick walls to halt the flames!
Walk up Washington Street into Portsmouth Square, the birthplace of the city.
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4. Portsmouth Square: The Cradle of San Francisco
733 Kearny St, San Francisco, CA 94108
Step into the lively, sunlit plaza of Portsmouth Square and watch the elderly Chinatown residents gathered around concrete tables intently playing Chinese chess, Xiangqi, and card games. You are standing in the literal birthplace of San Francisco: the historic plaza of the Mexican village of Yerba Buena before it was ever named San Francisco.
On July ninth, eighteen forty-six, during the Mexican-American War, Captain John B. Montgomery marched his sailors ashore from the USS Portsmouth in the bay and hoisted the American Stars and Stripes on a wooden flagpole right on this square, claiming California for the United States.
Two years later, in May eighteen forty-eight, merchant Sam Brannan ran into this exact plaza waving a quinine bottle filled with gold dust, shouting to the crowds: Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River! His shout sparked the California Gold Rush, drawing three hundred thousand forty-niners from across the globe.
Look in the northwest corner for the bronze galleon monument to author Robert Louis Stevenson, who loved to sit on these benches in eighteen seventy-nine daydreaming of Treasure Island. Now head through the Dragon Gate onto Grant Avenue.
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5. Dragon Gate & Grant Avenue: Entrance to the Oldest Chinatown
Grant Ave & Bush St, San Francisco, CA 94108
Stand before the green-tiled pagoda eaves and carved stone dragons of the Dragon Gate at the corner of Bush Street and Grant Avenue. Flanked by two stone guardian lions, this ceremonial arch was dedicated in nineteen sixty-nine using green roof tiles and stones gifted by the government of Taiwan. You are stepping into the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese enclave outside Asia.
Look through the archway down Grant Avenue: notice the distinctive street lamps shaped like glowing lotus blossoms and green dragons winding up lampposts. Following the nineteen zero six earthquake, city authorities plotted to evict the Chinese community to the outskirts. Defiant Chinese merchants hired American architects to design buildings with flamboyant pagoda roofs, colorful balconies, and dragon motifs to rebrand Chinatown as an irresistible tourist attraction, saving their neighborhood forever.
Grant Avenue was originally named Calle de la Fundación by early Spanish settlers, making it the oldest continuous street in all of San Francisco.
Walk up Grant Avenue toward the red-brick bell tower of Old St. Mary's Cathedral.
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6. Old St. Mary's Cathedral: The Granite and Brick Survivor
660 California St, San Francisco, CA 94108
Pause on the sidewalk of California Street before the Gothic red-brick tower of Old St. Mary's Cathedral. Look up at the clock face on the tower: beneath the dial is a bold gold-lettered biblical inscription from Ecclesiasticus: Son, Observe the Time and Fly from Evil.
Dedicated on Christmas Eve in eighteen fifty-four, Old St. Mary's was the very first Catholic cathedral in California and the tallest building in San Francisco at the time. Its foundation stones are made of dressed granite quarried in China and brought across the Pacific on sailing ships, while its red bricks were shipped all the way around Cape Horn from New England!
In the eighteen fifties, this corner bordered the wild Barbary Coast brothels and gambling dens. The inscription Fly from Evil was deliberately placed right above the brothels to warn young men heading into temptation. In nineteen zero six, the intense heat of the firestorm melted the church's bronze bells and altar, yet the granite foundation and brick walls held firm.
Walk up the steep hill on Mason Street toward the rumbling Cable Car Museum.
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7. Cable Car Powerhouse & Museum: The Moving National Landmark
1201 Mason St, San Francisco, CA 94108
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.