15 Historic Landmarks in San Francisco
15 landmarks with verified facts and stories
Alcatraz Island
View from Pier 33, The Embarcadero, San Francisco
That island sitting out there in the bay — it looks bleak, right? Cold concrete, guard towers, razor wire.
Castro Camera
575 Castro Street, San Francisco
Five seventy-five Castro Street.
Chinatown Dragon Gate
Bush Street & Grant Avenue, San Francisco
You're standing at the entrance to the oldest Chinatown in North America.
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco
This bookstore changed American literature, and it did it by getting raided by the police.
Compton's Cafeteria Riot Site
101 Taylor Street (corner of Turk), San Francisco
There's nothing here now that marks what happened on this corner.
Emperor Norton Plaque
Commercial Street & Montgomery Street, San Francisco
In eighteen fifty-nine, a bankrupt businessman named Joshua Abraham Norton walked into the offices of the San Francisco Bulletin and placed a notice declaring himself Norton the First, Emperor of the United States.
Fairmont San Francisco
950 Mason Street, San Francisco
The Fairmont Hotel was scheduled to open on the morning of April eighteenth, nineteen-oh-six.
Ferry Building
1 Ferry Building, The Embarcadero, San Francisco
Before the Golden Gate and Bay bridges were built, this was one of the busiest transit terminals on the planet — second only to Charing Cross station in London.
Grace Cathedral
1100 California Street, San Francisco
This cathedral sits on land that once belonged to Charles Crocker, one of the Big Four railroad barons who built the Transcontinental Railroad.
Grateful Dead House
710 Ashbury Street, San Francisco
Seven ten Ashbury Street.
Mission Dolores
3321 16th Street, San Francisco
This is the oldest intact building in San Francisco, and its founding date puts American history in a perspective that most people don't expect.
Musee Mecanique
Pier 45, Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco
Step inside this place and you'll find over three hundred antique arcade machines, coin-operated automata, and mechanical curiosities spanning more than a century of American amusement.
Palace of Fine Arts
3601 Lyon Street, San Francisco
What you're looking at is a building that was designed to look like a ruin — and then actually became one.
Sutro Baths Ruins
1004 Point Lobos Avenue, San Francisco
These concrete ruins clinging to the cliff were once the largest indoor swimming facility in the world, and the man who built them owned one-twelfth of San Francisco.
Transamerica Pyramid
600 Montgomery Street, San Francisco
Look up at this thing.
Explore history in San Francisco
GPS-guided narration at every landmark. Tap a spot on the map, hear the story. Every fact verified.