Western Addition, San Francisco, California

A southern view from Alta Plaza Park, which is in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. Most of the valley in the central part of this image is in the Western Addition neighborhood. In the background on the right can be seen Sutro Tower, which is west of Twin Peaks. The darker hill to the left and slightly more in the foreground is Buena Vista Heights, which is directly south of Haight Street (between the Haight-Fillmore and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods). Cathedral Hill is visible to the left, just west of Van Ness Avenue and north of Hayes Valley.

The Western Addition is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, sandwiched between Van Ness Avenue, Golden Gate Park, the Upper and Lower Haight neighborhoods, and Pacific Heights.

Historically, it was an addition to the city west of Van Ness Avenue (hence, "Western Addition"). The area was first developed around the turn of the 20th century as a middle-class suburb served by cable cars. Except for Hayes Valley, it survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake with its Victorian-style buildings largely intact.

Today, the term Western Addition is generally used in two ways: to denote the development's original geographic area, or to denote the eastern portion of the neighborhood (also called the Fillmore District) that was redeveloped in the 1950s.

Those who use the term in the former sense generally consider its (relatively ill-defined) boundaries to be Van Ness Avenue on the east, Masonic on the west, California Street on the north, and Fell or Oak Street on the south. From there, it is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods such as Lower Pacific Heights, Cathedral Hill, Japantown, The Fillmore, Hayes Valley, Alamo Square, Anza Vista, and North Panhandle.

The San Francisco Association of Realtors defines the term more closely to the latter sense, treating it as "District 6D" (a goodly portion of this neighborhood is in board of supervisors district 5), bounded by Geary Boulevard in the north, McAllister and Fulton streets, and Golden Gate Avenue on the south, Van Ness Avenue in the east, and Divisadero Street on the west. By this definition, the Western Addition is roughly synonymous with The Fillmore and Cathedral Hill.^[1]

After the Second World War, the Western Addition — particularly the Fillmore District — became a population base and a cultural center for San Francisco's African American community. Since then, urban renewal schemes and San Francisco's changing demographics have led to major changes in the economic and ethnic makeup of the neighborhood, as the Fillmore District suffered from crime and poverty while many other districts underwent significant gentrification. Today, most areas of the neighborhood are again solidly middle-class.

The Central Freeway used to run through the neighborhood to Turk Street, but that section of the freeway was closed immediately after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and later demolished.

Gentrification

Since the early 1990s, the Western Addition has undergone massive gentrification. Thousands of the neighborhood's African-American residents have chosen to relocate in part due to of the city's housing prices and cost of living.^{[citation needed]}

Architecture

The architecture of portions of the Western Addition (particularly the Fillmore district) is markedly different from the Victorian structures that dominate most of the Western portion of San Francisco. During the executive mandates for urban renewal in the 1940s, thousands of livable, Victorian-style homes and businesses owned by the city's working class African American residents were were seized by the government under eminent domain and razed to make room for government sponsored housing projects.

African American and Japanese Relations

Prior to the US involvement in WWII, the Western Addition was home to substantial Japanese-American and African-American communities. The two groups lived relatively harmoniously until the US involvement in WWII. Following the anti-Japanese sentiment following Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, thousands of Japanese-American families were sent to internment camps. While interned, the Federal government seized homes and businesses.

Geary Boulevard was erected to create a clear division between the district's working class section, and its more upwardly mobile and decidedly middle-class Pacific Heights neighborhood.^{[citation needed]} Upon their return from internment camps, Japanese-Americans came back to the Western Addition to find that their once prosperous homes and businesses had been razed to make way for Geary Boulevard. In lieu of privately-housed businesses in the district's Victorian-style buildings, Japanese-American culture and business enterprise relocated to the Japantown Mall.

Notes

See also

San Francisco Bay Area portal

• Fillmore District