Photo, Print, Drawing Market Street, Embarcadero Plaza to Octavia Street, San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA Market Street Cultural Landscape District

Title

• Market Street, Embarcadero Plaza to Octavia Street, San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA

Other Title

• Market Street Cultural Landscape District

Names

• Historic American Landscapes Survey, creator
• O'Farrell, Jasper
• Warnecke, John Carl
• Ciampi, Mario Joseph
• Halprin, Lawrence
• John Carl Warnecke & Associates
• Lawrence Halprin & Associates
• Vioget, Jean-Jacques
• Bartlett, Washington Allon
• Eddy, William
• Hoff, John
• San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni)
• United Railroads of San Francisco
• Market Street Railway Company
• Standard Gas & Power Company
• Byllesby Corporation
• Kahn, Samuel
• San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association
• Mario J. Ciampi & Associates
• Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)
• San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA)
• MWA Architects
• Hayes, Thomas
• Hallidie, Andrew Smith
• Clay Street Hill Railroad Company
• Central Pacific Railroad
• Stanford, Leland
• Market Street Cable Railway Company
• Lowney, T. J.
• San Francisco Bureau of Streets
• San Francisco Fire Department
• Lentelli, Leo
• Ryan, Walter D'Arcy
• Rolph, James "Sunny Jim", Jr.
• Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE)
• Bassett, Edward
• Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)
• San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA)
• San Francisco Board of Supervisors
• San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Planning and Development
• Herman, Justin
• Vaillancourt, Armand
• Frost, Robert
• Sasaki, Walker and Associates
• Twain, Mark
• Warner, Jane
• Bolivar, Simon
• San Francisco Auxiliary Water Supply System (AWSS)
• California Department of Transportation, sponsor
• ICF, contractor
• PGAdesign, contractor
• Maley, Patrick, project manager
• Rusch, Jonathon, project manager
• Garrett, Cathy, project manager
• Marar, Petra, project manager
• Monroe, Ellen, delineator
• Tada, Grace, delineator
• Sitzer, Mollie, delineator
• Flairty, Kelly, delineator
• Scheve, Florence, delineator
• Kaul, Charla, delineator
• Towar, Bob, delineator
• Schafer, Stephen D., photographer
• Deunart, Boris, project manager
• Lassell, Susan, project manager
• Rusch, Jonathon, historian
• Felicetti, Nicole, historian
• Boyce, Gretchen, historian
• Cox, Eleanor, historian
• Lassell, Susan, historian
• Lyons Medina, Allison, historian
• Rahimi-Fike, Aisha, historian
• Tavel, January, historian
• Yarbrough, Edward, historian
• Yates, Timothy, historian
• Stevens, Christopher M., transmitter
• McPartland, Mary, transmitter

Created / Published

• Documentation compiled after 2000

Headings

• -  streets
• -  streetscapes
• -  Modern architectural elements
• -  streetscapes
• -  streetscapes
• -  streetscapes
• -  streetscapes
• -  Beaux-Arts architectural elements
• -  earthquakes
• -  City Beautiful movement
• -  cable railroads
• -  transportation
• -  streetcars
• -  plazas
• -  street furniture
• -  protest movements
• -  urban renewal
• -  sidewalks
• -  pedestrian facilities
• -  fountains
• -  public sculpture
• -  city planning
• -  California--San Francisco County--San Francisco

Latitude / Longitude

• 37.783995,-122.4081

Notes

• -  For additional documentation, see also HABS CA-1722 and HABS CA-1796.
• -  Significance: The Market Street Cultural Landscape District comprises one of the primary corridors through the City of San Francisco, with design elements reflecting the course of the city's transformation from the Gold Rush Era through the 1970s. The district encompasses the Market Street roadway, streetscape elements such as light standards and other street furnishings, and public plazas located between The Embarcadero and Castro Street, retaining a common orientation to balance the pedestrian experience with transportation utility. The Market Street corridor was first planned by surveyor Jasper O'Farrell in 1847. Originally constructed through San Francisco's early downtown district of the mid-nineteenth century, Market Street has been extended numerous times in subsequent decades to its current length. The characteristics of the streetscape have also been continually updated, including through the Market Street Redevelopment Plan (MSRP) post-World War II design professionals planned and implemented during the 1970s. In 1979, the MSRP design was completed, which introduced a Modernist aesthetic to the Market Street streetscape between The Embarcadero and Octavia Boulevard. Market Street Cultural Landscape District played a notable role as San Francisco's main circulation artery and facilitator of urban development in periods of the city's early urban and economic growth during the mid-nineteenth through early-twentieth centuries. As San Francisco's main circulatory artery, Market Street provided the physical foundation and transportation infrastructure mechanism that facilitated the city's development. O'Farrell's linear plan for Market Street, which formed an east-west axis joining the waterfront with the interior, helped spur early urban development from 1847–60. Improvements to the street paving, municipal infrastructure, and introduction of multi-modal transportation prompted private investment along the corridor during a period of increasing urbanization from 1860–1906. Market Street provided the organizing space needed to facilitate rapid reconstruction after the 1906 earthquake and fire and, from 1906–29, was the venue where new progressive-era public urban infrastructure was most aggressively introduced, and new private investment in the development of landmark-quality buildings was made. Market Street is significant for its historic role as a venue for civic engagement in San Francisco based on its association with the public demonstrations that elevated issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights to national attention beginning in the 1960s through 1979, as well as its association with public civic events and demonstrations that elevated civic discourse about other important themes in civil rights. The route from Justin Herman Plaza to Market Street and through UN Plaza to City Hall was used as a ceremonial and processional route through the city for protest marches, community celebrations, and civic parades. In this role as a venue for large public civic events such as political rallies, civic ceremonies, and public speeches, Market Street is also significant for association with San Francisco social history themes, including the labor rights and civil rights movements, war protest and peace celebration, and women's suffrage. Lastly, the Market Street Cultural Landscape District is an exemplary representation of the work of master architects John Carl Warnecke and Mario J. Ciampi, and master landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. As a collaboration of these designers, the MSRP applied an interdisciplinary approach to urban design, which helped elevate the influence of landscape architecture as a discipline that provides perspective on modern urban planning. At a time when federal redevelopment programs across the country were facilitating the demolition of historic buildings at the neighborhood scale and privileging the needs of the automobile over the pedestrian, the MSRP was an early example of a designed urban landscape that prioritized the pedestrian experience and responded sympathetically to the existing historic context. The MSRP project was progressive in demonstrating that modern transportation infrastructure could be integrated into a historic environment without mass demolition of historic buildings or widening roads to accommodate more vehicular traffic. Rather, an alternative approach to redevelopment was possible by integrating public spaces in the form of plazas, developing a unified streetscape aesthetic, incorporating existing built environment features, expanding sidewalks, and removing street-level rail transit. These approaches, which countered typical contemporary modern design practices, combined the strengths of the three joint venture master landscape designers, leveraging their professional expertise in the fields of architecture, urban planning, and landscape design to respond to the project's programmatic goal of fostering revitalization in San Francisco through the redevelopment of its primary transportation artery, Market Street. While Halprin, Warnecke, and Ciampi acknowledged that improving deep-seated social and economic problems through a street redevelopment project was not always possible, they offered the MSRP as a starting point. Each practitioner brought essential sensibilities and expertise to the effort: Warnecke's early support for the elevation of interdisciplinary design as an essential component of urban planning and his leadership as a champion for sensitivity to historic places; Ciampi's extensive experience guiding San Francisco urban development projects that prioritized development as to tool for economic and social impact; and Halprin's innovative approaches to prioritizing human experience through the creation of public spaces that are inspired by socially progressive ideals and design processes. By combining these complementary talents, the MSRP for Market Street yielded a cultural landscape that offered an alternative to the destructive and divisive approach to urban redevelopment that preceded it.
• -  Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N200, N201, N202
• -  Survey number: HALS CA-164
• -  Building/structure dates: after 1847 Initial Construction
• -  Building/structure dates: 1968-1979 Subsequent Work
• -  Building/structure dates: 1906-1916 Subsequent Work

Medium

• Photo(s): 203
• Color Transparencies: 6
• Measured Drawing(s): 34
• Data Page(s): 107
• Photo Caption Page(s): 36

Call Number/Physical Location

• HALS CA-164

Source Collection

• Historic American Landscapes Survey (Library of Congress)

Repository

• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Control Number

• ca4485

Rights Advisory

• No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government; images copied from other sources may be restricted. https://aj.sunback.homes/rr/print/res/114_habs.html

Online Format

• image
• pdf