“To be where little cable cars/ Climb halfway to the stars/”
“I Left My Heart in San Francisco” by George Cory & Douglass Cross, 1961
What San Franciscan doesn’t get a little chill when the immortal Tony Bennett sings our official, beloved city song? And why not? It celebrates our rolling National Historic Landmarks, the cable cars. For the first 100 years after the Powell Street cable car service began in 1888, you could stand at the most iconic spot in the cable car system—the Powell Street turntable—and actually watch those “little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.”
Now you can’t.
For the past 20 years or so, all you can see looking up the line from the Powell and Market turntable is a tunnel of trees; the historic vistas up and down Powell Street have vanished. The first block of Powell is dark and gloomy much of the year. It has been stripped of its landmark ornamental street lighting and other details. Historic landmark buildings on the block, including the Flood Building, which has adjoined the cable car turntable since 1904, have their facades obscured from street level. And there is virtually nothing on the turntable block that tells the unique story of cable cars in general, and in San Francisco specifically.
Market Street Railway is leading a campaign to restore a more historically evocative look to the first block of Powell. We believe San Francisco needs to show the city’s symbol—the cable cars—the respect they deserve.
Our recommendations
We are working to build support for practical, low-cost changes that will restore the traditional vista from the Powell cable car turntable “halfway to the stars” and evoke more of the historic look and feel this important block had for more than half a century, from the 1910s to the early 1970s. Here’s what we seek:
• Restore the 1918 “Golden Triangle” streetlight fixtures, an official San Francisco landmark, to the first block of Powell Street to match the rest of the street, replacing the cheap, ugly current fixtures.
• Restore traditional concrete sidewalks to the first block of Powell, to match the new sidewalks proposed for the next two blocks of Powell (Ellis to Geary Streets) and for Market Street.
• Retain the brick pavement and granite edging around the cable car trackway, as an homage to the historic brick paving on lower Powell Street.
• Retain the granite circles, bollards, and other treatments around the turntable area. They are functional and attractive, and safety and efficiency concerns require that passenger access to the cable cars remain controlled, as it has been since the 1970s. Ensure, however, that the new design for Market Street’s sidewalks blends in with the turntable area paving treatments.
• Replace or remove the trees on the first block of Powell to restore the view corridor; if needed, plant additional trees in other locations to provide equal or greater environmental benefit; consider flower baskets or other greening.
• Install durable historic displays at the inside edge of the sidewalks, telling the story of the cable cars primarily through captioned photos; these would educate riders waiting in line about the unique transit system they’re about to ride.
We are working with merchants in the Union Square and Hallidie Plaza areas to build support, which has initially been strong. In conjunction with this effort, Market Street Railway President Rick Laubscher, in his role as a board member of the Union Square Foundation, has been promoting an initiative to use Hallidie Plaza, the sunken entrance to the Powell Street BART/Muni Metro station named for cable car inventor Andrew Hallidie, as an ongoing venue for events mounted by San Francisco’s many Sister City Committees and its more than 70 foreign consulates. The overall goal is revitalization and activation of this tremendously valuable city property.
An “orphan block”
Our proposal to restore the first block of Powell Street is timely because of two other projects on either side of it.
One project involves the second and third blocks of Powell between Ellis and Geary Streets. Planning is almost complete to replace and widen the sidewalks, providing more room for pedestrians on these crowded blocks. Metal “parklets” placed in the former parking lanes on those blocks as a demonstration project will be scrapped and curbs will be removed, with lighted bollards separating sidewalks from trackway. Removing these modernist designs will draw more attention to the landmark “Golden Triangle” streetlights on these blocks, which date to 1918 and used to extend all the way to Market Street, as well as the historic building facades on lower Powell. The plan would also permanently ban private automobiles on these two blocks, to ease cable car operation.
The other project involves Market Street itself. As we have reported here, the city is moving forward with a plan to remake our main thoroughfare for the first time in 50 years: restoring traditional concrete sidewalks to replace the bricks, which pose an increasing slip-fall hazard with their worn surfaces; installing exclusive bicycle lanes at the street edge of the sidewalks; and redoing all the transit stops, which will speed F-line service among other benefits. The last overhaul of Market Street in the mid-1970s, following the construction of the BART/Muni Metro subway, included the first block of Powell Street and the creation of Hallidie Plaza. Neither of those areas is included in the current plan, known as Better Market Street. This would leave the first block of Powell, where 19th century cable cars turn around, looking even more out of place than it already does, what with 1970s design and landscaping elements.
The way it was
The Ferries & Cliff House Railway Co. built its cable car lines on lower Powell Street in 1888, replacing horsecar tracks that had been there the previous ten years. The company decided to use single-ended cable cars and turn them around at the foot of Powell with a mechanical turntable in the street. That setup has not changed since, making the Powell-Mason line the oldest transit line in North America still using its original route with the same motive power and type of vehicle. (The Powell-Hyde line was created in 1957 by combining the inner part of the Powell line that used to run past Fillmore Street on Washington and Jackson with the outer part of the O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde line.)
The streetscape along Powell in 1888 was typical of the downtown area of San Francisco, with gaslights for street illumination and unadorned sidewalks. The 1906 Earthquake and Fire decimated downtown and put the Powell cable car lines out of business for several months. A few years later, ornamental electric streetlights with five globes were installed along lower Powell. In 1918, these gave way to the taller ornamental light standards with two arms, installed throughout the greater Union Square area. These handsome light standards, known as the “Golden Triangle” standards for the area north of Market Street they cover, are basically scaled-down versions of the monumental (and landmark) “Path of Gold” light standards along Market Street. They were considered the most advanced street illumination in the nation in the early 20th century.
Lower Powell Street itself was paved in brick, with concrete sidewalks flecked with reflective mica, the standard for downtown San Francisco in that era. There were no street trees, although a colorful flower stand was installed in 1915 on the sidewalk near the turntable, typical of several such amenities in the greater Union Square area. (This flower stand is still there, but not frequently operated today.)
This arrangement of Powell Street was fully in place by 1918, and it barely changed for the next 55 years. The first four blocks of Powell were fronted by buildings either erected or renovated right after the 1906 calamity, plus of course Union Square, providing a setting of remarkable continuity for the cable cars through the decades.
The brick paving on Powell Street itself deteriorated over the decades, and was increasingly patched with asphalt, completely so on the turntable block. Automobiles and trucks were still free to use that first block of Powell, squeezing past the cable cars and the riders jumping on them at the turntable to turn either onto Market Street, or right onto Eddy Street, which formed a right-angle with Powell at Market. Streetcars rumbled within a few feet of the cable car turntable on Eddy Street for decades before being replaced by buses in 1948.
So, the familiar tableau of the “little cable cars,” handsome light standards, and a clear view up Powell to the top of Nob Hill remained unchanged for more than a half-century, until a new type of transit triggered alterations that changed the scene dramatically.
Bricks and BART
When Market Street was dug up in the late 1960s to build stations for a two-level transit subway underneath, no location was more affected than Powell and Market.
Planners wanted a grand entrance to the Powell Street subway station being built both for the sleek Transbay trains of BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit District) and, a level above, updated Muni streetcars connecting to the five surface lines to the west.
So, they demolished the modest three-story retail building at Market and Eddy Streets and created a sunken plaza, which was named after the inventor of the cable car, Andrew Hallidie. They used part of the space to extend Fifth Street across Market, and then closed the first block of Eddy Street. They also closed the first block of Powell to automobile traffic, reserving it for cable cars and pedestrians only. These changes made much more room for the growing number of pedestrians in the area, including those looking for a cable car ride.
The extended subway construction period was terrible for businesses along Market; many failed. Muni streetcar tracks on Market were rerouted more than once at each station site to keep transit running during construction. Sidewalks were narrowed to the minimum in many places. It was not an inviting environment for shoppers or workers.
The planners insisted the years of disruption would be worth it, because they were going to overhaul Market Street itself to take advantage of the BART disruption. Noted landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and architect Mario Campi designed a new streetscape, with sidewalks made twice as wide by removing a lane of parking and a lane of traffic in each direction. The sidewalks were paved not in concrete, but in brick, a material with little or no historic precedent on San Francisco sidewalks. Modernist-design traffic lights went up; the traditional street signs on Market were taken down, and a row of London Plane trees (a hybrid of the American Sycamore) was planted (in some blocks, double rows) from the Ferry Building end of Market all the way to Van Ness Avenue.
The original plans called for removing all the overhead Muni wires, ending surface streetcar service on Market and turning back or rerouting trolley coaches, all to provide a clear view corridor along Market Street. That part of the plan, however, faltered when Muni riders rose up in protest. (And, of course, the vintage streetcars made their comeback on Market thanks to efforts led in part by Market Street Railway.)
These dramatic Market Street changes affected the first block of Powell Street as well, because it, and Hallidie Plaza, were included in the grand modernization program. The “Golden Triangle” streetlights came down in the first block of Powell, though they remain on the rest of downtown Powell Street. They were replaced by low metal poles topped with modern rectangular lights out of context with the surrounding landmark buildings and the cable cars. Those, in turn, were later replaced by nondescript, off-the-shelf modern fixtures that look like Home Depot specials.
The pavements were integrated with the rest of the Market Street project: brick sidewalks, a brick trackway for the cable cars; and a strip of granite pavers separating the sidewalk from the trackway in lieu of a curb. Around the turntable, two concentric circles of granite to set it off.
At first, intending riders were free to swarm the turning cable cars as before, but within a few years, granite bollards and cables were erected on the inner granite circle to channel riders into a queue. Five 30-foot high poles were installed around the outer granite circle, with downlights at the top to illuminate the turntable area. These, like the short streetlights on Powell itself, are made of bronze, an expensive and elegant material, but at some point, all these bronze poles were painted a drab tan, because the city didn’t maintain the bronze properly. In the past 20 years, mounts for tall banners appeared on the poles; these are in use less than half the time to promote various events (though never, oddly, to celebrate the cable cars themselves). Flower baskets were also added lower down on the poles as part of a city beautification program pushed by then-Mayor (now California Governor) Gavin Newsom.
But it was another form of plant life that has made the biggest change to the first block of Powell Street in the past 50 years: trees. Judging from photographs taken in 1973, when London Plane trees were planted on Market Street, a group of the same species was also planted on the first three blocks of Powell, between Market and Geary. London Plane trees shed their leaves in winter, which lets more light down to the street and opens up views at least part of the year.
However, when the cable car system was rebuilt (1982-84), the London Plane trees were removed from the first three blocks of Powell. This may be because the fallen leaves from deciduous trees could impede braking of cable cars or clog the cable slot. In any event, the trees were not replaced at all in the second and third blocks of Powell after the cable car rebuilding. They were also removed from the Eddy Street edge of Hallidie Plaza and not replaced.
On the first block of Powell, the original trees were replaced by ten evergreen trees, known commonly as New Zealand Christmas Trees. Small at first, these are now 4 stories tall, with dense canopies, blocking the traditional view from the turntable area of the cable cars climbing up Nob Hill, as well as the views of Market Street from Nob Hill and Union Square and the views of the landmark Flood Building from the street. They cast the first block of Powell into gloom, which discourages some pedestrians from walking along the block. We are told that poor pruning over the years makes it impossible to scale down the existing trees in size.
Adding all these changes together, the result is a dramatically different—and less inviting and attractive—setting for the most iconic San Francisco landmark of all.
No sense of history
The current environment in the first block of Powell Street fails miserably to convey a sense of history of this location. Not only is the dated 1970s streetscape design badly out of sync with both Powell Street’s history and that of the cable cars themselves, there is scant interpretation visible that tells visitors the unique story of this enduring San Francisco landmark. There’s nothing that shows them how Powell Street used to look at various times in its 170-year-long history. There’s nothing that explains how quickly cable car technology spread following its 1873 debut in San Francisco, information that would be of interest to people from cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, London, and Sydney, all of which were among the many that once ran cable cars. And there’s nothing that tells them how close the Powell cable cars came to extinction in 1947 until saved by a civic campaign led by Friedel Klussmann, nor about the campaign to rebuild the system in the 1980s led by then-Mayor (now Senator) Dianne Feinstein.
These and other important aspects of cable car history could be documented in displays installed on the inner edge of the sidewalks, facing the cable car tracks in that first block of Powell. Similar displays about the waterfront’s history (including transit) can be seen on the Embarcadero pedestrian promenade, installed as part of the waterfront overhaul 25 years ago that included the E- and F-line tracks. The Embarcadero displays were financed by the two percent of public project funding set aside for public art projects. Arts funding from the Better Market Street project could possibly be used for historic displays on Powell near Market Street.
Restore Powell’s history!
Market Street Railway’s mission is “Preserving Historic Transit in San Francisco.” No transit in our city is more historic than the cable cars, and the context in which millions of riders view them is a part of our preservation mandate. By advocating these improvements on the turntable block of Powell Street, restoring the traditional view “halfway to the stars” and bringing back other historic elements, we believe we are furthering our mission just as much as we have done by playing a major role in restoring ten historical liveries to various Powell cable cars, reminding everyone that these storied vehicles have been a part of the city’s history for more than 130 years.
But wait, there’s more
We don’t want our members and readers to think we’re strictly focused on the surroundings of the cable cars. We’re working on separate initiatives regarding the cars themselves, and how they operate; which we’ll share in future issues of Inside Track. Stand by!
Sentinel of the turntable
The Flood Building has housed many notable tenants through the years, including the powerful Southern Pacific Railroad before it built its own headquarters at the foot of Market Street, and, in the 1920s, the Pinkerton Detective Agency, whose investigators included Dashiell Hammett, later the creator of legendary detective Sam Spade. (Among less-notable tenants: the nonprofit Market Street Railway, whose small office has been in the Flood Building for more than 30 years.) The ground floor retail space of the Flood Building has been patronized and remembered by five generations of San Franciscans, with tenants including the Clinton Cafeteria, the Owl Drug Store, a large Woolworths, and currently the Gap flagship store.
The Flood Building is flanked on the west side of the cable car turntable by One Powell Street, designed in 1921 to house the headquarters of A.P. Giannini’s Bank of Italy, later Bank of America. It was well-known to generations of San Franciscans as BofA’s “Day and Night Branch,” open many hours later than the traditional 3:00pm bank closing. Now, its retail space houses AT&T’s largest store. The Powell Street facades of these two historic buildings, as well as the other historic buildings on the west side of that block, are obscured by the street trees, depriving cable car riders and pedestrians the juxtaposition of the cable cars and the buildings that have flanked them for a century or longer.
