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The Marina District is one of the northern districts of San Francisco, California. The area is bounded to the east by Van Ness Ave, on the west by Lyon Street and the Presidio, on the south by Lombard St. The neighborhood sits on the site of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, staged after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to celebrate the reemergence of the city. The grounds for this world's fair were created from a former lagoon on landfill. Aside from the Palace of Fine Arts (POFA), all other buildings were demolished to make a residential neighborhood. Cow Hollow, Russian Hill, and the Presidio bound the Marina District to the south, east, and west, respectively. On the Bay north of Cow Hollow, a seawall was built parallel to the shoreline, and the marshland in between was filled with sand pumped up from the bottom of the ocean. Dredging left enough deep water for the creation of the St Francis and Golden Gate Yacht Clubs, which occupy prestigious spots at the foot of Baker Street. Slightly to the east is the Marina Green, a large stretch of turf frequented for the most part by runners. A less-strenuous exercise is walking along the Golden Gate Promenade that runs parallel to Marina Boulevard, continuing a couple of miles further before reaching the eponymous bridge. A massive landscaping effort recreated natural marshlands and tidepools at Crissy Field, the long swath of land and tidal marsh that reaches from Marina Green to the bridge. The creation of the Marina District is shrouded in myth and folklore. Many people claim that the area was created out of the rubble dumped into the Bay in the period after the great quake of 1906. Photographs of the Marina District as recently as 1912 show most of the area still as being in the bay, posing the question of why it would take six years for the rubble to be dumped to form the Marina. In 1885, Filbert Street was still the old Presidio Road. North onto Buchanan Street toward the bay, two blocks away, Lombard Street was sand dunes, about 35 feet higher than present. The shoreline was already being pushed northward by industrial power companies. The area now covered by Moscone Recreation Center and Marina Middle School was Lobos Square, a flat spot where the dunes had been leveled out to reach a hodgepodge of wharves and industrial plants extending from Laguna Street to Steiner Street. Most of it came down in 1906, including the Gas Light Company generating house. But the brick meter house stood its sand, and the date of completion is still visible: "1893," in the archway at Buchanan and North Point streets, behind the Marina Safeway (aka "Single's Safeway"). West from there on North Point is a slope in the sidewalk where shore met sea. It was here on North Point, west of Webster Street, that speculator James Fair built a seawall in the 1890s, in a grand plan to create 70 acres (283,000 m³) of shallow waters and build an industrial park. The walls were completed at the moment they ran out of sand to fill it with, so there it sat, like a full bathtub. Until 1912, standing at the intersection North Point and Fillmore Streets, in the heart of today.s Marina, would mean standing in the bay. The creators of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition leased James Fair.s pond and finished the project. Two dredges and 146 days later, the bathtub was filled with 1.3 million cubic yards (100,000 m³) of sand and mud. After the exposition closed in 1915, the Fair heirs got the land back and sold it to the Marina Development Corporation. City Engineer M. M. O'Shaughnessy created a hodgepodge of streets that connected to the original city grid. The layout is out of character with the older portions of the city, creating the maze-like feel of much of the Marina District. The Marina Development Corporation carved this area into 634 residential lots, plus the Marina Green. When it was built out in the 1920s, the area previously known as Harbor View or North End became known as The Marina. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused substantial damage, but the neighborhood was quickly rebuilt. Much of the damage was due to liquefaction of the fill upon which the neighborhood is built. U.S. Route 101/Lombard Street is a boulevard that bisects the southern edge of the Marina District. The street is dotted with motels built in celebration of the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge and a collection of retail, fast food, and residential units. On a typical afternoon the street is a strange mix of tourists searching for Ghirardelli Square and the Golden Gate Bridge, residents of the Marina/Cow Hollow area, and children walking towards Marina Middle School. Lombard Street runs between Cow Hollow to the south and the Marina, sometimes referred to as NoLo [North of Lombard], to the north. Moscone Recreation Center sports the largest children's park in the city and also has tennis courts, basketball courts, and a volleyball area. It has served as a meeting location for generations of San Francisco natives, and can be seen in several historic films. The slice of land that was the site of the Tower Of Jewels during the 1915 World's Fair was initially named Funston Park. The park was renamed after the assassination of mayor George Moscone as a political payback to the conservative neighborhood activists in the Marina District who opposed Moscone's progressive policies. The Marina Green is a picturesque park adjacent to the boat marina itself, and the San Francisco bay. The wind at the Marina Green frequently exceeds 50 MPH, which lends itself to windsurfing at the nearby East Beach. Schools in the Marina include the Tule Elk Child Development Center and Marina Middle School (the student body of which is primarily bussed in from other less affluent parts of San Francisco. The few children and teenagers living in the area tend to go to expensive private schools, as with the culturally similar "Lake" district). Source: Wikipedia |