San Francisco

Know This Place's coverage begins in San Francisco, one building at a time.

Neighborhoods documented so far

• Castro / Eureka Valley
  Where coverage began — every residential parcel in the city's Castro/Upper Market boundary, 3,142 buildings across 73 streets.
• Mission
  Every residential parcel in the city's Mission boundary, 5,004 buildings across 100 streets — Liberty Hill, the Inner Mission alleys and Mel Blanc's childhood home.
• Corbett Heights
  19 buildings on Corbett Avenue, Mars Street and Danvers Street, documented from local history research.
• Haight Ashbury
  Six buildings east of Golden Gate Park, tied by published guides to the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Charles Manson and others.
• Pacific Heights
  The Spreckels Mansion, the Casebolt House and two other houses on the ridge north of Japantown.
• Seacliff
  The bluffs above the Golden Gate — a Robin Williams residence and a house tied to Ansel Adams.
• Russian Hill
  Houses on the cable-car grades tied to Joe DiMaggio and Nicolas Cage.
• Bernal Heights
  A 1974 Patty Hearst address and Carlos Santana's high-school home.
• Hayes Valley
  The Alamo Square Painted Ladies — Alice Walker's home until 1996.
• Marina
  Joe DiMaggio's house during his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, and a Cow Hollow house moved from beside the Presidio & Ferries cable terminal.
• Lone Mountain / USF
  Jefferson Airplane's house facing Golden Gate Park, and the First A.M.E. Zion Church on Golden Gate Avenue.
• Western Addition
  A 1974 Patty Hearst address; the Third Baptist Church complex on McAllister Street and Bethel A.M.E. Church on Laguna Street.
• Excelsior
  Jerry Garcia's first home.
• Outer Mission
  Jerry Garcia's home with his grandparents; the 1901 streetcar car barn on San Jose Avenue and the 1910 Ingleside police station.
• Oceanview / Merced / Ingleside
  23 buildings across 16 streets named in the 2010 OMI Historic Context Statement, from the Engine Co. #33 firehouse to St. Emydius Catholic Church.
• Ingleside Terraces
  The 1912 residence park on the former Ingleside Racetrack; developer Joseph Leonard's own house on Cedro Avenue and the Westwood Park storefronts on Ocean Avenue.
• South Beach
  The waterfront blocks south of Market — the site of Jack London's 1876 birthplace, and eleven buildings with public open space.
• Financial District
  The office district north of Market — the Mechanics' Institute on Post Street, the Crocker Bank Building, Redwood Park, Empire Park and the Montgomery Street block where Samuel Brannan built in 1853.
• East Cut
  The blocks between Market and Folsom — Foundry Square, the Downtown Plan's plazas and the art the 1% program put in them.
• Union Square
  The retail blocks at the top of Market Street.
• South of Market
  The wide blocks west of Fourth Street.
• Chinatown
  The Presidio & Ferries Railroad's horse car barn, in the Jackson Square Historic District.
• North Beach
  The upper reaches of Grant Avenue, formerly Dupont Street, where the First Colored Baptist Church built in 1854.
• Tenderloin
  The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium's block, where the Mechanics' Institute held its industrial exhibitions from 1882; California Hall on Polk Street, built in 1912 as the German House; and two Mason Street supportive-housing buildings with facade art.
• Lakeshore
  The corner of the city around Lake Merced; the San Francisco State University parcel that housed the Sutro Library from 1982 to 2012.
• Bayview Hunters Point
  The south-eastern quarter, settled as the industrial suburb of South San Francisco — 190 buildings named in the 2010 Area B survey, from the Albion Brewery and the South San Francisco Opera House to the Pelton cottages off Third Street.
• Dogpatch
  The workers' blocks east of Interstate 280 that grew around the shipyards and iron works of Potrero Point; sixty-seven buildings named in the two surveys of 2001, from the row of Pelton cottages to the Irving M. Scott School.
• Mission Bay
  The warehouse and factory blocks between Division Street and Mariposa, filled land the railroads owned before 1906 and the design showrooms renamed Showplace Square; 69 buildings named in the 2011 Showplace Square / Northeast Mission survey.
• Potrero Hill
  The slopes above Potrero Point; the 19th Street building where an Italian family opened a grocery in 1905.
• Nob Hill
  The ridge above Union Square; four buildings named in the 2017 Corbett Heights context statement as the work of architects who also built in that neighborhood.
• Inner Sunset
  The blocks between Golden Gate Park and Mount Sutro; the Henry Doelger Building on Judah Street, named in the 2022 Duboce Triangle context statement as a citywide example of the Streamline Moderne.
• Glen Park
  The valley around Glen Canyon; the 30th Street house Fernando Nelson built first, in 1880, before the 4,000 that followed.
• Noe Valley
  The valley south of the Eureka Valley ridge; a 21st Street house the 2017 Eureka Valley context statement names as an example of the Second Bay Tradition.
• Sunset / Parkside
  The avenues across the dunes between Golden Gate Park and Sloat Boulevard; 170 buildings the Office of the Assessor-Recorder photographed for tax assessment between 1946 and 1959.
• Outer Richmond
  The blocks running west from Park Presidio Boulevard to Ocean Beach; 61 buildings photographed for tax assessment between 1947 and 1975.
• Inner Richmond
  Between Golden Gate Park and the Presidio; 42 buildings photographed for tax assessment between 1946 and 1964.
• Presidio Heights
  The ridge between the Presidio and Pacific Heights; 28 buildings photographed for tax assessment between 1945 and 1991.
• West of Twin Peaks
  The residence parks and tracts on the western slopes above Portola Drive; 11 buildings photographed for tax assessment between 1946 and 1951.
• Japantown
  The blocks around Post and Buchanan Streets; two parcels photographed for tax assessment in 1961 and 1962.
• Portola
  The hillside district between McLaren Park and Highway 101, settled around its market gardens and greenhouses; the 1932 University Mound Home and a 1927 Silver Avenue church, both surveyed in 1990 as unreinforced masonry.
• Visitacion Valley
  The south-eastern corner of the city between McLaren Park and the county line; two buildings on Bay Shore Boulevard.

Downtown coverage begins with the buildings named in two city inventories — the privately owned public open spaces the Downtown Plan requires, and the artworks the 1% art program pays for — which is why those pages are offices and hotels rather than the residential buildings the rest of the site documents.

Historic districts

The city's surveys have drawn historic districts across many of the neighborhoods above, and a district rarely keeps to one of them. The districts documented here are listed on their own, each page carrying the buildings inside the district and the streets it runs through.