1913 route in San Francisco, part six: the Ferry Building and the Embarcadero, San Francisco.
The Ferry Building (1892) was where the car ferries arrived and left to connect the Lincoln Highway with Oakland. According to Wikipedia until the completion of the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s, the Ferry Building was the second busiest transit terminal in the world, with London’s Charing Cross Station in first place. Who knew?
After graduation from Lowell High School in San Francisco when my father started his chemistry studies at UC Berkeley (and before he found student housing in Berkeley) and he still lived at home in SF, he would get himself to the Ferry Building by streetcar and then take the ferry over to Berkeley where he caught a Key System streetcar to Cal. (It was just before the Key System began running to the East Bay from the Transbay Terminal in 1939.) He said it was a very long commute!
The market at the Ferry Building is great fun and something I go back to again and again.
After the earthquake in 1989 in San Francisco the Ferry Building closed and underwent an extensive restoration, reopening in 2003 and is a beauty. A personal favorite in this set is the shot of the two people talking at the Embarcadero just by the Ferry Building: the old and the new!
The historic streetcars along Market and the Embarcadero are a treasure – a rolling museum. Read more about the historic streetcars here.
