Fascinating San Francisco | Page 2

sea through the Golden Gate, at the piers along the waterfront.
Market street stretches diagonally across the peninsula from the Ferry Building to the base of Twin Peaks, the urban mountain which has been tunneled to get rapid transit to residence parks.
Twin Peaks is practically the geographical center of San Francisco. By keeping this in mind visitors will avoid the mistake of thinking that the end of Market street is the western boundary of the city.
From the sweep of Market street radiate practically all of the city's important arteries. A resplendent thoroughfare by day, 100 feet wide, Market street takes on a sorcery all its own at night, when the electroliers designed by D'Arcy Ryan, light wizard of the Panama-Pacific Exposition, flood it with radiance. Market street is then the most dazzling of boulevards, every aspect of it in motion--crowds, taxis, cars and the colors of advertising displays.
The junction formed by Market, Kearny, Geary and Third streets is the heart of downtown San Francisco. It is the newspaper center, and close by are big and little hotels, shops, restaurants and sidewalk flower stalls. Here traffic eddies around Lotta's Fountain, presented to the city by Lotta Crabtree, stage idol of the yesteryears. Beside it is one of the bronze bells and iron standards that mark El Camino Real--the King's Highway--which the padres trod in making their rounds of the early California missions. Lotta's Fountain has two tablets. One has its donor's name, and the other is inscribed to Luisa Tetrazzini, whose soprano was first acclaimed to the world from San Francisco, and who crossed the continent to sing Christmas carols to the people on this street corner in 1910. One block east, Montgomery street leads into the financial center of the Pacific. To the west are Union Square and its shaft, commemorating Dewey's victory at Manila Bay, and Powell street, with its cafe and theatre crowds.
A short walk out Market street takes you to the Civic Center, with the City Hall, Library, Auditorium and State Building grouped about a formal garden. The War Memorial, with its Opera House and American Legion Museum, will face the City Hall on Van Ness avenue.
Fronting the Pacific, San Francisco, which covers a trifle over 42 square miles of territory, has an ocean beach extending for three miles on its western boundary and overlooked by automobile highways. Street cars, starting at the Ferry Building, arrive at the beach after traversing residence districts and scenic routes, unfolding views of hills, forests, parks, forts, lighthouses and seals on rocks lashed by surf.
Between the Ferry Building and the ocean front--what a sweeping canvas it would take to suggest all this even in broad outline!
The "ships, towers, domes, theatres" which Wordsworth saw from Westminster Bridge in London are here, and so are the added motifs of San Francisco's own song of seduction.

Sea Glamour
Ever has the glamour of the sea enveloped San Francisco. From the sea came Don Juan Manuel Ayala in the San Carlos in 1775, charting a course through the fog and opening the Golden Gate. From the, sea also came the Argonauts, transforming the somnolent Yerba Buena into the city, of San Francisco. And from the sea, up to the time of the railroad, came practically all of the goods with which the merchants of the city did business. Today with the sea ebbs and flows the tide of wealth that makes San Francisco the key port of the Pacific. The banks and exchanges of California and Montgomery streets, the foreign trade and insurance offices of Pine street, the downtown skyscrapers--all reflect in some way San Francisco's debt to the sea.
From the sea also comes health. The breezes that blow from it and the fogs that drift down over the ridges combine to give San Francisco a paradoxical climate--winters as warm as those in the south and summers that are matchless for their exhilarating coolness.
San Francisco shows a higher per capita industrial output than any other American city of its class because of its ideal working conditions.
A city conscious of its obligation to the sea, San Francisco has always been interested in its waterfront, which perpetuates Spanish origins in its expressive name of Embarcadero--the embarking place.
The skyline of the city is no longer stenciled by the towering masts of sailing ships discharging or loading cargo, or lying in the stream or in Richardson's Bay awaiting charters, as in the days when wheat was king of California's great central valley. The virility of the waterfront of San Francisco, however, is as persistent as in the age that provided Frank Norris with his epic themes.
The masts and yards of older outline have given place to stubby cargo booms of liners, freighters and tramps of multiple flags and nationalities. Along the Embarcadero they disgorge upon massive concrete piers silk, rice and tea