California Street (San Francisco)

California Street is a major thoroughfare in San Francisco, California. It is one of the longest streets in San Francisco, and includes a number of important landmarks. It runs in an approximately straight 5.2 mi (8.4 km) east–west line from the Financial District to Lincoln Park in the far northwest corner of the city.

California Street
View from the top of California Street Looking towards the financial district with the Bay Bridge in the background
Length5.22 mi (8.40 km)
LocationSan Francisco
Coordinates37.791761°N 122.411739°W / 37.791761; -122.411739
East endMarket Street, Main Street, and Drumm Street
West end32nd Avenue
California Street to Oakland Bay Bridge.

Description

California Street begins at the intersection of Market Street, Main Street, and Drumm Street in front of the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero Center, one block from the Ferry Building, then travels through Chinatown, over Nob Hill, through Lower Pacific Heights, Laurel Heights, and the Lake District. The street makes a slight bend at 8th Avenue, then parallels the edge of the Presidio of San Francisco through the Richmond District until its dead end terminus just west of 32nd Avenue, at Lincoln Park.

Fifty-four blocks of California Street, from Van Ness Avenue westward to the dead end past 32nd Avenue, comprised the last major leg of the final 1928 alignment of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, leading out to the highway's western terminus in Lincoln Park.

The route has four to six lanes for its entire length. A cable car line runs on the eastern portion from Market to Van Ness Avenue and a trolleybus line runs on the western portion between Steiner and 32nd Avenue.

Landmarks and points of interest
United
TWA
Photo for comparison
Vintage airline posters of San Francisco, featuring cable cars, looking east from approximately the intersection of California and Stockton towards San Francisco Bay and the western span of the Bay Bridge. A 2016 photograph with a similar perspective is included to illustrate the prominence of skyscrapers in the present-day Financial District.

Two novels are named for San Francisco's California Street: California Street (1959) by Niven Busch, which documents the rise of a publishing magnate; and California Street (1990) by Donna Levin. Levin's novel is the story of a psychoanalyst searching for a missing woman. Both novels use "California Street" as a metaphor for the milieu in which the stories unfold.

See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to California Street (San Francisco).
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