North Beach is a neighborhood in the northeast of San Francisco adjacent to Chinatown, the Financial District, and Russian Hill. The neighborhood is San Francisco's "Little Italy" and has historically been home to a large Italian American population, largely from Northern Italy. It still has many Italian restaurants and a sizeable Italian community, though many other ethnic groups currently live in the neighborhood. It was also the historic center of the beatnik subculture and has become one of San Francisco's main nightlife districts as well as a residential neighborhood populated by a mix of young urban professionals, families, and Chinese immigrants.
The American Planning Association (APA) has named North Beach as one of ten "Great Neighborhoods in America".
Contents
Location
North Beach is bounded by the former Barbary Coast, now Jackson Square, the Financial District south of Broadway, Chinatown to the southwest of Columbus below Green Street, Russian Hill to the west, Telegraph Hill to the east and Fisherman's Wharf at Bay Street to the north.
Main intersections are Union and Columbus, the southwest corner of Washington Square, Grant Avenue, and Vallejo Street.
The neighborhood consists of modern, mid-century apartments, duplexes, and Victorian homes and multiplexes.
History
Originally, the city's northeast shoreline extended only to what is today Taylor and Francisco streets. The area largely known today as North Beach was an actual beach, filled in with land fill around the late 19th century. Warehouses, fishing wharves, and docks were then built on the newly formed shoreline. Due to the proximity of the docks, the southern half of the neighborhood south of Broadway was home of the infamous Barbary Coast.
In 1890, Elizabeth Ashe and Alice Griffith founded a settlement house that would become the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center to help fight illness, illiteracy and poor conditions in North Beach and lobbied hard for better recreation opportunities for neighborhood children. In 1907, the city formed its first playground commission with the idea of carving out space for recreation areas specifically for kids. The first playground commission picked two sites, including the North Beach Playground. The plan included an outdoor swimming pool, which was financed by diverting funds from a fire department cistern planned for Powell and Lombard, perhaps the first publicly financed public pool in the city. In 1910, the North Beach playground and pool was constructed. The three youngest of the nine DiMaggio kids, Vince, Joe and Dom, grew up playing baseball there in the 1920s and became professional baseball players.
After the 1906 earthquake reconstruction, a large number of Italian immigrants created the Italian character of the neighborhood that still exists. Prominent Italian Americans that came from the neighborhood include baseball legend Joe DiMaggio who grew up in the neighborhood and briefly returned to live there with his wife Marilyn Monroe during the 1950s, as well as former San Francisco mayor and politician Joseph Alioto plus others from the prominent Alioto family.
North Beach was home to the first lesbian bar in San Francisco, Mona's 440 Club. Mona Sargeant and her husband Jimmie opened Mona's in 1936 in a North Beach basement as a small underground bar celebrating the end of Prohibition. Once Mona's gained enough popularity between the gay community and tourists, the club moved to a much larger location at 440 Broadway Street. The club remained Mona's 440 until the mid-1950s.
After World War II, and accelerated during the Korean War, the Italian American population has been moving out of the Little Italy sections of North Beach, Telegraph Hill, and Fisherman's Wharf due to suburbanization.
Attractions and characteristics
Events
The North Beach Festival street fair on Grant Avenue and Columbus Avenue usually held on Father's Day weekend in June is one of the city's largest. It is also considered one of the nation's oldest street fairs.
The Italian Heritage Parade, formerly known as the Columbus Day Parade, is the United States' longest continuously run Italian heritage celebration. The route goes from Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, along Columbus Avenue, to Washington Square, in front of Saints Peter and Paul Church, San Francisco. The event celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2018.
Population
The neighborhood still retains an Italian character with many Italian restaurants, cafes, and bakeries that line Columbus Avenue and Washington Square.
Religious institutions and sites
The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi, the city's namesake, is located on Vallejo Street.
Known as "The Italian Cathedral of the West", Saints Peter and Paul Church is located on the north side of Filbert Street in front of Washington Square. Joe DiMaggio married his first wife there, and came for photos after his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Saints Peter and Paul is considered a San Francisco landmark and an emblematic tie to the neighborhood's Italian American past.
Secular institutions and sites
An alleyway between Columbus and Grant Avenues is named for Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac, who once lived there and frequented the famous City Lights Bookstore on the corner of Columbus and Broadway as well as the numerous nearby bars and coffee shops.
Broadway east of Columbus Avenue still serves as one of the city's main nightclub districts and offers restaurants, blues clubs, strip clubs, nightclubs, and jazz clubs.
Education
It is in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and is within the John Yehall Chin Elementary School (余河小學) attendance area. Chin has a Cantonese language program.
The Academy of Art University has at least one building in the area, across the street from Pier 39.
Prior to its 2022 closure, the San Francisco Art Institute was located in the northern end of North Beach, on Russian Hill.
Notable residents
Frankie Crosetti (1910–2002), Major League Baseball shortstop
Joe DiMaggio (1914–1999), Hall of Fame Major League Baseball center fielder
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919–2021), poet and painter
Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), poet and writer
Jack Hirschman (1933–2021), poet and social activist
Gabe Kapler (born 1975), Major League Baseball outfielder, former manager of the San Francisco Giants, and 2021 NL Manager of the Year
Bob Kaufman (1925–1986), Beat poet and surrealist, jazz performance artist, and satirist
B. Kliban (1935–1990), cartoonist
Peter Macchiarini (1909–2001), Modernist jeweler and sculptor
Marino Pieretti (1920–1981), MLB baseball player
Jack Sarfatti (born 1939) Featured in Herbert Gold's "Bohemia" and David Kaiser's How the Hippies Saved Physics, inspiration for Emmett Brown in "Back to The Future" Physicist working on time travel.
A. D. Winans (born 1936), poet, essayist, short story writer, and publisher