San Francisco’s Ferry Building

Continuing my tale, last summer was a most unusual one for me when, quite unexpectedly, I became a commuter from one end of San Francisco Bay to the other. The hub of my journey from Vallejo in the North Bay to La Honda near the ocean to the south was San Francisco’s Ferry Building and along with the ferry ride on the bay, it became the highlight of my commute. I was familiar with it from other trips by ferry from Alameda in years past, not to mention a life-long history with the city of my birth and all the permutations of this landmark, visible from the water, the Bay Bridge & from the west on Market Street. Along with nearby Telegraph Hill’s Coit Tower, it ranks as the most recognizable building in The City from my perspective, the come-lately pyramid notwithstanding.

Bayside entrance of Charles Phan’s popular Vietnamese Restaurant,
Bay Bridge reflected.

I always know I’m home when the clock tower of the Ferry Building comes into view. The distinctive edifice and tower were completed in 1898 at the Port of San Francisco’s Pier 1, just 15 years before my grandmother arrived in the city, a young single woman from New York. She married my grandfather and had 3 sons but was also a career woman, retiring in 1955 from her job as secretary to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

It was called the Ferry Building because, well, that’s where the ferries arrived from the East Bay. The Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge was built 1935-36, but the ferries continued to bring people and their cars into The City well into my childhood and for a treat on some trips our family would float rather than drive from Berkeley. By either ferry or bridge we were on our way to visit my Nana, my father’s mother, and the view of the Ferry Building was the visual anchor of our journey. Then, during my college days I worked at a downtown department store and rode a streetcar down Market Street, the Ferry Building a constant in the view to the bay.

Above, The Ferry Building before 1935-36 construction of the Bay Bridge,
with an untethered Yerba Buena Island.  Below, obscured by the highly unpopular Embarcadero Freeway.

Begun in the mid-1950s, the infamous Embarcadero Freeway was the subject of citizens’ revolts for 35 years, destroying what had been San Francisco’s beautiful historic bayside and essentially removing the Ferry Building from view on the city side. The freeway was part of an unfinished project meant to connect the Bay Bridge with the Golden Gate Bridge but proved so unpopular it was never finished. It took the 7.1 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 to resolve the issue, damage to the roadway dictating it be torn down and rebuilt, or not. The citizenry had its way, the waterfront of The Embarcadero was cleared and restored to the much loved sweep of city by the bay.

Today’s Ferry Building is home to a variety of retail and eating spaces as well as the ferry terminal. My commute found me using it as a conduit on my way, to pick up coffee & a croissant from Peet’s for the ferry, a mushroom turnover for a mobile lunch on the way to the train, or a quick browse of other favorites like Book Passage and Roy Fong’s Imperial Tea Court, which had moved from it’s original authentic location in Chinatown.

I came to know which entrance to use, depending on time of day and how much time I had between boat & train, knowing the lesser-used ladies’ room (very important), or end to end for a wander on those days with more time on my hands. While visitors enjoy themselves, to be sure, the site is a favorite with San Franciscans, including a well-attended farmer’s market on Tuesdays, Thursdays & Saturdays.

https://www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com/

Next week, San Francisco’s de Young Museum.

More PortMoresby stories here.