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San Francisco- Marina District - Kitchen includes a refrigerator and a gas range. There are built in bookshelves on one wall. There is a Laundromat 2 doors down the street. Bathroom has been renovated, with large shower stall (no bathtub) Close to Balboa Park and City College. View More Listings -->
Marina District Information
The Marina District is an affluent, picturesque neighborhood of
San Francisco, California. The area is bounded to the east by Van Ness Ave, on
the west by Lyon Street and the Presidio, on the south by Lombard St. The
neighborhood sits on the site of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International
Exposition, staged after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to celebrate the
reemergence of the world-class city. The grounds for this world's fair were
created from a former lagoon on landfill. Aside from the Palace of Fine Arts (POFA),
all other buildings were demolished to make a residential neighborhood. Many
current residents are what the natives refer to as transplants.
On the bay north of Cow Hollow, a sea wall was erected parallel to the
shoreline, and the marshland in between was filled with sand pumped up from the
bottom of the ocean. Dredging left enough deep water for the creation of the St
Francis and Golden Gate Yacht Clubs, which occupy prestigious spots at the foot
of Baker Street. Slightly to the east is Marina Green, a large stretch of turf
frequented for the most part by runners. A less strenuous exercise is the Golden
Gate Promenade that runs parallel to Marina Boulevard, continuing a couple of
miles further before reaching the eponymous bridge. A massive landscaping effort
recreated natural marshlands and tide pools at Crissy Field, the long swath of
land and tidal marsh that reaches from Marina Green to the bridge.
The creation of the Marina District is shrouded in myth and folklore. Many
people claim that the area was created out of the rubble dumped into the Bay in
the period after the great quake of 1906. Photographs of the Marina District as
recently as 1912 show most of the area still as being in the bay, posing the
question of why it would take six years for the rubble to be dumped to form the
Marina. In 1885, Filbert Street was still the old Presidio Road. North onto
Buchanan Street toward the bay, two blocks away, Lombard Street was sand dunes,
about 35 feet higher than present. The shoreline was already being pushed
northward by industrial power companies. The area now covered by Moscone
Recreation Center and Marina Middle School was Lobos Square, a flat spot where
the dunes had been leveled out to reach a hodgepodge of wharves and industrial
plants extending from Laguna Street to Steiner Street.
Most of it came down in 1906, including the San Francisco Gas Light Company
generating house. But the brick meter house stood its sand, and the date of
completion is still visible: “1893,” in the archway at Buchanan and North Point
streets, behind the Marina Safeway (aka "Dateway").
West from there on North Point is a slope in the sidewalk where shore met sea.
It was here on North Point, west of Webster Street, that speculator James Fair
built a seawall in the 1890s, in a grand plan to create 70 acres (283,000 m sq)
of shallow waters and build an industrial park. The walls were completed at the
moment they ran out of sand to fill it with, so there it sat, like a full
bathtub.
Until 1912, standing at the intersection North Point and Fillmore Streets, in
the heart of today’s Marina, would mean standing in the bay. The creators of the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition leased James Fair’s pond and finished
the project. Two dredges and 146 days later, the bathtub was filled with 1.3
million cubic yards (100,000 m sq) of sand and mud.
After the exposition closed in 1915, the Fair heirs got the land back and sold
it to the Marina Development Corporation. City Engineer M. M. O'Shaughnessy
created a hodgepodge of streets that connected to the original city grid. The
layout is out of character with the older portions of the city, creating the
maze-like feel of much of the Marina District. The Marina Development
Corporation carved this area into 634 residential lots, plus the Marina Green.
When it was built out in the 1920s, the area previously known as Harbor View or
North End became known as The Marina.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused substantial damage, but the neighborhood
was quickly rebuilt. Much of the damage was due to liquefaction of the fill upon
which the neighborhood is built.
Today the neighborhood remains as popular as ever with the post-college crowd, young East Coast professionals, natives of Southern California, and relocated Midwesterners. Most arrived after the 1989 earthquake, when many of the older population left and the area transformed into a hip district for young, successful professionals.