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San Francisco- Union Square - Large Studio – Converted 3 Car Garage with Free Internet (mission district)- Studio has an open floor plan with linoleum flooring and measures 21’ x 19’4”, approximately 406 square feet. Kitchen includes a refrigerator and a gas range. View More Listings -->
Union Square Information
Union Square is the central shopping, hotel and theater district in San
Francisco, California. Its name is derived from the one-block park situated
between Post, Geary, Powell and Stockton Streets, but its importance as the
largest collection of large department stores, swank boutiques, tourist trinket
shops and salons in the West continues to make Union Square a major visitor draw
and downtown San Francisco a vital, cosmopolitan place. Grand hotels and small
inns, and repertory, off-broadway and single-act theaters contribute to the
area's dynamic, 24-hour character.
While Union Square proper dates from the United States Civil War era, the park
has undergone many notable changes: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake leveled
most of the buildings that surrounded it, a large underground parking garage was
installed in the early 1940s and relocated the park's lawns, shrubs and landmark
statuary to the garage "roof," and in the 1990s, the square was remodeled again
to create more paved surfaces (for easier maintenance) with outdoor cafes. Union
Square today retains its role as the ceremonial "heart" of San Francisco,
serving as the site of many public concerts, impromptu protests, speeches by
visiting dignitaries, and the annual Christmas tree and Menorah. Two cable car
lines pass the Square on Powell Street, and public views of the park can be had
from such high places as the St. Francis Hotel tower, the Sir Francis Drake
Hotel, Macy's top floor, and the Grand Hyatt hotel.
Union Square has also come to describe not only the immediate vicinity of the
park but the general shopping, dining and theater sub-districts within the
surrounding blocks. The Geary and Curran theaters one block west on Geary anchor
the "theater district" and border the Tenderloin. At the end of Powell Street
two blocks south, where the cable cars turn around beside Hallidie Plaza at
Market Street, is a growing retail corridor that leads to the Yerba Buena
Gardens, with its own arts and entertainment centers, more large hotels, the
Moscone Convention Center and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Also south
of Market and near Yerba Buena Gardens is the historic United States Mint
Building, built in 1874 of granite: a rare survivor of the 1906 quake. Nob Hill,
with its grand mansions, apartment buildings and hotels, stands to the northwest
of Union Square. This area is also home to some of the most upscale luxury
hotels in San Francisco.
To the north is Chinatown, with its gate at Grant Avenue and Bush Street, one of
the largest Chinese communities outside Asia. The city's historic "French
Quarter" runs east along Bush Street and tucks into the alleys of Belden Place
and Claude near the French Consulate and the landmark Notre-Dame-des-Victoires
Church.
This area was the home to the city's first French settlers, who, according to
historian Gladys Hansen, were most sympathetic of the housing and employment
needs of the Chinese settlers in the nascent days of Chinatown and shared Dupont
street as a business address -- a tolerance that was only tested, according to
Alexandre Dumas in A Gil Blas in California (1852), when Chinese cooks began to
tamper with French cuisine. The cafes, hotels and restaurants of the French
Quarter today maintain a distinct joie de vivre befitting the Quarter's
heritage. Every year, the area is the site of the boisterous Bastille Day
celebration, the nation's largest, and Bush Street is temporarily re-named
Buisson. Directly east of the Square is Maiden Lane, a narrow alley of exclusive
shops and cafes that leads to the Financial District and boasts San Francisco's
only building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright — most notable for being the
predecessor for New York City's Guggenheim Museum.
Besides the cable cars, Union Square is served by numerous trolley and bus lines
and the F Market streetcar. The Muni Metro and BART subway sytems both serve the
area at nearby Powell Street Station.