CDubs
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From The Streets of San Francisco: A History:
Back in 1839, when San Francisco was Yerba Buena, a Mexican outpost of cabins and tents huddled between a bayside cove and some chaparral-covered hills, the authorities asked a Swiss surveyor, Jean-Jacques Vioget, to lay out a rudimentary grid of north-south and east-west streets around a plaza (now Portsmouth Square). The resultant blocks measured 412 feet by 275 feet, just as most downtown-to-Arguello blocks do today. Vioget's streets were eventually named Kearny, Grant, Sacramento, Clay, Washington, Jackson, and Pacific.
Eight years later, just a year before gold was discovered in the Sierra foothills, Irish engineer Jasper O'Farrell codified and extended Vioget's grid plan over Telegraph, Russian, and Nob hills and out into the shallow cove itself. To negotiate the steep hills, O'Farrell wanted to terrace some roadways into gently sloping curves, but property owners insisted that the existing alignments remain. South of Yerba Buena Cove, landowners forced O'Farrell to offset Vioget's grid at a problematic 45-degree angle, with much larger, 600-by-400-foot blocks spreading over Rincon Hill to Mission Bay. To unite the two competing grids, O'Farrell devised a 120-foot-wide, diagonal boulevard, Market Street, which he aimed southwest at the summit called Twin Peaks. A century later, columnist Herb Caen characterized O'Farrell's great boulevard as "the obtuse angle that no traffic plan can ever solve."
Thus was Vioget's hills-be-damned geometry forced on the infant American city. Eccentric, enduring, and at times breathtaking, the grid has shaped the physical experience of San Francisco ever since.
Eight years later, just a year before gold was discovered in the Sierra foothills, Irish engineer Jasper O'Farrell codified and extended Vioget's grid plan over Telegraph, Russian, and Nob hills and out into the shallow cove itself. To negotiate the steep hills, O'Farrell wanted to terrace some roadways into gently sloping curves, but property owners insisted that the existing alignments remain. South of Yerba Buena Cove, landowners forced O'Farrell to offset Vioget's grid at a problematic 45-degree angle, with much larger, 600-by-400-foot blocks spreading over Rincon Hill to Mission Bay. To unite the two competing grids, O'Farrell devised a 120-foot-wide, diagonal boulevard, Market Street, which he aimed southwest at the summit called Twin Peaks. A century later, columnist Herb Caen characterized O'Farrell's great boulevard as "the obtuse angle that no traffic plan can ever solve."
Thus was Vioget's hills-be-damned geometry forced on the infant American city. Eccentric, enduring, and at times breathtaking, the grid has shaped the physical experience of San Francisco ever since.
