San Francisco › Places and landmarks
Ferry Building
The ferry terminal at the foot of Market Street, with its clock tower after the Giralda of Seville, now a food hall.
Photo: King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Ferry Building opened in 1898 at the end of Market Street, where the ferries across the bay came in. Its clock tower, 75 metres tall, was modelled on the Giralda, the bell tower of the cathedral of Seville. Before the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1936 and 1937, some fifty thousand people a day passed through it.
It came through the earthquakes of 1906 and 1989. In 1959 a double-decker freeway, the Embarcadero Freeway, was built right in front of it and cut it off from the city; after the 1989 earthquake damaged that freeway, it was pulled down, and the waterfront opened up again.
Since 2003 the long hall inside is a market of bakers, cheese makers, coffee roasters and oyster bars, and three days a week a farmers’ market sets up round it. Ferries still leave from its back for Sausalito, Larkspur, Oakland and Alameda. Visit it in 3D ›
More in San Francisco
Transamerica PyramidThe white pyramid of the Financial District, 260 metres tall, the sign of San Francisco’s skyline since 1972.
Coit TowerThe slim concrete tower on top of Telegraph Hill, built in 1933 with the money of Lillie Hitchcock Coit.
Dragon GateThe gate into Chinatown on Grant Avenue at Bush Street, with green tiled roofs, dragons and two stone lions.
ChinatownThe oldest Chinatown in North America, along Grant Avenue and Stockton Street, with lanterns over the street.
Union SquareThe square of the big shops and hotels, named after the rallies for the Union before the Civil War.
Cable carsThe last cable cars in the world still running in city streets, pulled up the hills by a cable under the road.
Washington SquareThe green heart of North Beach, the Italian quarter, before the white church of Saints Peter and Paul.
City LightsThe bookshop of the Beat poets on Columbus Avenue, which published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1956.
Golden Gate BridgeThe orange suspension bridge across the mouth of the bay, about five kilometres west of the game’s map.
Lombard StreetThe block of Lombard Street on Russian Hill with eight hairpin bends between flower beds, west of the game’s map.
AlcatrazThe rocky island in the bay, a federal prison from 1934 to 1963, built so that no one could swim away.
Sourdough breadThe sour, chewy bread of San Francisco, baked since the Gold Rush from a living dough.