Walking Tour
Starts Here

Tour Route and Highlights

Please meet us on the Post Street (north) side of the Dewey Monument in the center of Union Square.

• The Evolution of Union Square from Residential to Elite Shopping
• Sandlot Baseball
• The Civil War
• St. Francis Hotel
• 1906 Earthquake and Fire and Rebirth of the City
• The Dewey Monument and Alma Spreckels, Grandmother of San Francisco

Maiden Lane from Stockton to Grant Avenue

• Levi Strauss
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Morton Street/Crib Alley on the Barbary Coast

Grant Avenue from Maiden Lane to Sacramento Street

• Post 1906 Beaux arts and art deco architecture
• The Historic Preservation Movement
• The Chinatown Gate
• Sun Yat-sen, Father of Chinese Democracy
• Japanese Experience During the World War II Era
• African Americans and the Jazz District
• Old St. Mary’s Church
• Chinese in America
• The Comstock Lode
• The Transcontinental Railroad

Sacramento Street to Waverly Place

• History of the Chinese in Chinatown
• Christian Churches that aided the Chinese
• Chinese Temples

Waverly Place to Washington Street

• “Movie Alley”
• Madams and Parlor Houses
• Benevolent Associations and criminal tongs
• Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Don Ho and the Beatles

Grant Avenue to Washington Street

• First Private Home in San Francisco
• Chinese Telephone Exchange

Washington Street to Portsmouth Square

• First Americans, Spanish and Mexican Periods
• American conquest
• San Francisco’s Birthplace
• Gold Rush

For those planning on taking both the Morning and Afternoon tours, you will have as much as an hour and 15 minutes for lunch and resting.  There are many good places to eat lunch, and we will provide you recommendations.  We start the Afternoon Tour at 1 p.m.  For the benefit of guests only taking the Afternoon Tour, we repeat the Morning Tour stories of the beginnings of San Francisco through the Gold Rush (approximately 15 minutes).

See the Afternoon Tour for tour route and highlights.