North Beach, San Francisco

Location

North Beach sits within a web of San Francisco neighborhoods: the old Barbary Coast (now Jackson Square) and the Financial District lie south of Broadway, Chinatown sits southwest of Columbus below Green Street, Russian Hill is to the west, Telegraph Hill to the east, and Fisherman’s Wharf touches Bay Street to the north. Key crossroads include Union and Columbus, the southwest corner of Washington Square, Grant Avenue, and Vallejo Street. Its housing stock blends modern and mid-century apartments, duplexes, Victorian homes, and multiplexes.

History

Originally, the city's northeast shoreline extended only to what is today Taylor and Francisco streets. The area now known as North Beach was an actual beach, filled in with landfill around the late 19th century, after which warehouses, fishing wharves, and docks were built. Due to the proximity of the docks, the southern half south of Broadway was home to the infamous Barbary Coast. In 1890, Elizabeth Ashe and Alice Griffith founded a settlement house that became the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center to fight illness, illiteracy, and poor conditions, and lobbied for better recreation for children.

In 1907, the city formed its first playground commission, which selected two sites including the North Beach Playground. The plan included an outdoor swimming pool financed by diverting funds from a fire department cistern, possibly the first publicly financed public pool in the city. The playground and pool were constructed in 1910. Three of the nine DiMaggio kids—Vince, Joe, and Dom—grew up playing baseball there in the 1920s and became professional players.

After the 1906 earthquake reconstruction, many Italian immigrants created the neighborhood's Italian character. Prominent Italian Americans from the area include Joe DiMaggio, who briefly returned to live there with Marilyn Monroe during the 1950s, and former mayor Joseph Alioto. North Beach was home to the first lesbian bar in San Francisco, Mona's 440 Club, opened in 1936 by Mona Sargeant and her husband Jimmie. After World War II and during the Korean War, the Italian American population began moving out due to suburbanization.

Attractions and characteristics

The North Beach Festival street fair on Grant Avenue and Columbus Avenue, usually held on Father's Day weekend in June, is one of the city's largest and is considered one of the nation's oldest street fairs. The Italian Heritage Parade, formerly the Columbus Day Parade, is the United States' longest continuously run Italian heritage celebration; its route goes from Fisherman's Wharf along Columbus Avenue to Washington Square, and the event celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2018.

The neighborhood retains an Italian character with many Italian restaurants, cafes, and bakeries along Columbus Avenue and Washington Square. The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi is on Vallejo Street. Saints Peter and Paul Church, known as "The Italian Cathedral of the West," is on Filbert Street in front of Washington Square; Joe DiMaggio married his first wife there and came for photos after his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. An alleyway between Columbus and Grant Avenues is named for Beat writer Jack Kerouac, who once lived there and frequented City Lights Bookstore.

Broadway east of Columbus Avenue serves as a main nightclub district with restaurants, blues clubs, strip clubs, nightclubs, and jazz clubs.

Notable residents

Notable residents include baseball players Frankie Crosetti, Joe DiMaggio, Gabe Kapler, and Marino Pieretti; poets and writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Hirschman, Bob Kaufman, and A. D. Winans; cartoonist B. Kliban; modernist jeweler and sculptor Peter Macchiarini; and physicist Jack Sarfatti, who was featured in Herbert Gold's "Bohemia" and David Kaiser's "How the Hippies Saved Physics" and was inspiration for Emmett Brown in "Back to the Future."