Union Square (San Francisco)

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Union Square is the central shopping, hotel and theater district in San Francisco.

Union Square is the central shopping, hotel and theater district in San Francisco, California. Its name is derived from the one-block park situated between Post, Geary, Powell and Stockton Streets, but its importance as the largest collection of large department stores, swank boutiques, tourist trinket shops and salons in the West continues to make Union Square a major visitor draw and downtown San Francisco a vital, cosmopolitan place. Grand hotels and small inns, and repertory, off-broadway and single-act theaters contribute to the area's dynamic, 24-hour character.

While Union Square proper dates from the United States Civil War era, the park has undergone many notable changes: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake leveled most of the buildings that surrounded it, a large underground parking garage was installed in the early 1940s and relocated the park's lawns, shrubs and landmark statuary to the garage "roof," and in the 1990s, the square was remodeled again to create more paved surfaces (for easier maintenance) with outdoor cafes. Union Square today retains its role as the ceremonial "heart" of San Francisco, serving as the site of many public concerts, impromptu protests, speeches by visiting dignitaries, and the annual Christmas tree and Menorah. Two cable car lines pass the Square on Powell Street, and public views of the park can be had from such high places as the St. Francis Hotel tower, the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, Macy's top floor, and the Grand Hyatt hotel.

Union Square from The Cheesecake Factory.

Union Square has also come to describe not only the immediate vicinity of the park but the general shopping, dining and theater sub-districts within the surrounding blocks. The Geary and Curran theaters one block west on Geary anchor the "theater district" and border the Tenderloin. At the end of Powell Street two blocks south, where the cable cars turn around beside Hallidie Plaza at Market Street, is a growing retail corridor that leads to the Yerba Buena Gardens, with its own arts and entertainment centers, more large hotels, the Moscone Convention Center and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Also south of Market and near Yerba Buena Gardens is the historic United States Mint Building, built in 1874 of granite: a rare survivor of the 1906 quake. Nob Hill, with its grand mansions, apartment buildings and hotels, stands to the north of Union Square. This area is also the home to some of the fanciest hotels in San Francisco: the Fairmont Hotel, Nob Hill Hotel, and the Fitzgerald Hotel.

Along the eastern edge is Chinatown, with its gate at Grant Avenue and Bush Street, one of the largest Chinese communities outside Asia. The city's historic "French Quarter" runs east along Bush Street and tucks into the alleys of Belden and Claude near the French Consulate and the landmark Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church. This area was the home to the city's first French settlers, who, according to historian Gladys Hansen, were most sympathetic of the housing and employment needs of the Chinese settlers in the nascent days of Chinatown and shared Dupont street as a business address -- a tolerance that was only tested, according to Alexandre Dumas in A Gil Blas in California (1852), when Chinese cooks began to tamper with French cuisine. The cafes, hotels and restaurants of the French Quarter today maintain a distinct joie de vivre befitting the Quarter's heritage. Every year, the area is the site of the boisterous Bastille Day celebration, the nation's largest, and Bush Street is temporarily re-named Buisson. Directly east of the Square is Maiden Lane, a narrow alley of exclusive shops and cafes that leads to the Financial District and boasts San Francisco's only building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright — most notable for being the predecessor for New York City's Guggenheim Museum.

Looking down into Union Square from Macy's

Besides the cable cars, Union Square is served by numerous trolley and bus lines and the F-line streetcar. The Muni metro and BART subway sytems both serve the area at nearby Powell Street station.

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