Ferry Building

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. Every person crossing the bay came through this building. At its peak, fifty thousand commuters a day passed through these doors. The clock tower you're looking at, modelled after the Giralda bell tower in Seville, Spain, became the defining feature of San Francisco's waterfront.

Then came the nineteen-oh-six earthquake. The shaking and fires destroyed most of the surrounding area, but the Ferry Building's clock tower survived. It kept standing, a landmark amid the rubble, and became a symbol of the city's resilience.

But here's where the story gets painful. In nineteen fifty-nine, the city built the Embarcadero Freeway — a massive, double-decker elevated highway that ran right along the waterfront, directly in front of the Ferry Building. For over thirty years, this gorgeous building was completely hidden behind a wall of concrete and traffic. You couldn't see it from the city. The waterfront was severed from downtown.

San Franciscans fought for years to tear the freeway down, but it was a major traffic artery and the politics were impossible. Then, on October seventeenth, nineteen eighty-nine, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck. It damaged the Embarcadero Freeway badly enough that the city finally had the justification — and the political cover — to demolish it. The freeway came down in nineteen ninety-one. And suddenly, after three decades, the Ferry Building reappeared. The waterfront opened up. It was like the city rediscovered a piece of itself it had forgotten existed. The renovation into the marketplace you see today was completed in two thousand and three.