Barbary Boundary

Here are the boundaries of the district, which isn't exactly a cube and has no namesake square.



The historic architecture, much of it brick, is a defining feature of the neighborhood and what separates it from everything else around it. The destruction of the Produce District in the 1950s and 60s to make way for the Golden Gateway development changed the nature and boundary of the southern and eastern edge, cutting it off essentially from the waterfront. Slowly, that divide is being repaired. The iconic Transamerica Pyramid is the former site of the Montgomery Block, a key vector for much of early 20th Century's artistic life, including one resident, Samuel Clemens, who made quite a Mark in the World. As The Pyramid, however, it is a fortress of money and power that is entirely given to The Financial District and no longer relates to Jackson Square. Merchant Street, just east of The Pyramid, though, is historic and also features Cafe Prague, once located more centrally within Jackson Square, but still spiritually and gastronomically of it. I included Sydney Walton Square within my boundary line, as it is the only open space and was once the site of the great Colombo Market. Today all that remains is the entry arch and a very peaceful park where once a teaming streets full of hawkers, produce, restauranteurs and shoppers added soul and a full belly to The Barbary Coast's dissipated minions. Telegraph Hill rises steeply to the North, although there are buildings along Battery that are central to the neighborhood's story. Broadway is a natural divide, and Kearny Street separates Chinatown from Jackson Square and North Beach.
This story is here within these bounds.

This Manifest Place

The Barbary Coaster is a contemporary survey of San Francisco's Jackson Square. The district is both well-known and overlooked. Lately, it has quickened its pulse along with the City around it after a quiet, though decidedly not down & out period. Since the Gold Rush Era it has been the site of renown, infamy, wealth and despair, addicts and dreamers, the industrious and the shady. Words like 'hoodlum' and 'shanghaied' are said to have originated on these streets. It was and still is a truly International Settlement and today it is becoming something else yet again.

Of any place in San Francisco, it stands out as the oldest and most unique, being a downtown commercial district that survived the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, while all the rest of downtown burned to the ground. Its evolution has been spasmodic, its recent past hushed by money and a stillness like Snow White's sleep, and now it feels reawakened to me. I can only speak as a neighbor, an admirer who lives a few blocks up the hill casting a lovers eye on the brick district spread between Chinatown, Telegraph Hill, The Financial District and The Embarcadero.

This is a view of Pacific Avenue, the original bawdy corridor that led from the piers of the waterfront to Columbus where the district turns entirely Chinese. In the distance, just before the trees you can see the remaining posts of an arch that read, International Settlement, a marketing monicker put on the district in the mid-20th Century to try to recapture its past glory. There is some effort lately, driven by the Jackson Square Historic District Association, to restore the arch.

I hope to use this site as a place to survey it, to sort my thoughts and examine the history and legends of this most storied neighborhood; a brick enclave where the whiff of intrigue and possibilities has never really gone away.