Herb Caen once wrote that Commercial Street is the only street besides Market Street that runs directly to the Ferry Building, and he was right; Sacramento Street just misses it to the south and Clay Street to the north. Commercial used to run from Grant Avenue, Chinatown, to the Embarcadero, but it stops now at Battery Street due to the construction of the Embarcadero Center. I took a walk down Commercial Street last Sunday, updating some vintage pictures that were taken along the street. (Thumbnail images)
We’ll start where Commercial Street plunges down eastward from Grant Avenue. The view is looking south down Grant Avenue in 1963. (opensfhistory.org)
Looking down Commercial Street from Grant Avenue in 1960: That’s Bruce Lee on the mural at the right in the modern picture. (opensfhistory.org)
Commercial Street, looking down from Grant Avenue after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire: (UC Berkeley Library Archives)
Approaching Kearny during the 1950s: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)
Commercial Street levels out after you cross Kearny, continuing east. The photo on the left is a slide picture I took in 1983, and the update on the right was taken last Sunday.
As you approach Montgomery Street, you’ll come to the site of the first Mint established in San Francisco in 1852. A historical marker has been placed on the building commemorating the site, and another building has been build over the old Mint since the 1940 picture was taken. (Shorpy Archives)
An undated picture of an old brewery on Commercial at Leidesdorff Street, taken before the Transamerica Pyramid Building the background was constructed in 1972: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)
Commercial at Sansome Street in 1959: If you look hard enough….. you’ll notice that you can’t see the Ferry Building from here anymore. Actually, you probably still could if it wasn’t for that tree that they seemed to be so fascinated by in last Sunday’s picture. (opensfhistory.org)
Now we’ve reached what used to be the 100 block of Commercial Street. The Embarcadero Freeway is in the background of the vintage picture from Nancy Olmsted’s book ‘Ferry Building: Witness to a Century of Change’.
This is where Commercial Street emptied into the Embarcadero before the Embarcadero Center was build. The vintage picture is from the Charles Cushman Archives.
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Does Clay Street miss the Ferry Building to the north also? That fascinating tree or group of trees is merely mayten, Maytenus boaria, which is about as boaring as it sounds. The red flowering gum, Eucalyptus ficifolia (Corymbia ficifolia) behind where you took the picture from is more interesting.
I changed that, Tony, that was supposed to read Clay Street, which used to cut in north of the Ferry Building. Thanks for pointing that out. Where is the Eucalyptus? Is that the branch on the right of that same picture?
Eucalyptus ficifolia is not in the picture. I noticed it when I looked on Google Maps to identify the Maytenus boaria, and flipped the view backward.