Long Description:The district is made up of Piers Pier 45 to Pier 48 (the whole
waterfront). The waymark picture is taken by Pier 45.
"San Francisco's shoreline historically ran south and inland
from Clarke's Point below Telegraph Hill to present-day Montgomery
Street and eastward toward Rincon Point, enclosing a cove named
Yerba Buena Cove. As the city grew, the cove was filled. Over fifty
years a large offshore seawall was built and the mudflats filled,
creating what today is San Francisco's Financial District. The San
Francisco Belt Railroad, a short line railroad for freight, ran
along The Embarcadero. The roadway follows the seawall, a boundary
first established in the 1860s and not completed until the
1920s.
During the early-20th century when the seaport was at its
busiest and before the construction of the Bay Bridge, the plaza in
front of the Ferry Building was one of the busiest areas of foot
traffic in the world; only Charing Cross Station in London and
Grand Central Station in New York City were busier.[citation
needed] Piers 1, 1½, 3 and 5 (which now comprise the Central
Embarcadero Piers Historic District) were dedicated chiefly to
inland trade and transport. These connections facilitated the
growth of communities in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys and
fostered California's agricultural business. The Delta Queen docked
at Pier 1½, ferrying people between San Francisco and Sacramento.
There was once a pedestrian footbridge that connected Market Street
directly with the Ferry building and a subterranean roadway to move
cars below the plaza. In the earliest days, a maze of cable car
tracks terminated here, servicing the ferry commuters. These were
eventually replaced by a loop for several streetcar lines.
During World War II, San Francisco's waterfront became a
military logistics center; troops, equipment and supplies left the
Port in support of the Pacific theater. Almost every pier and wharf
was involved in military activities, with troop ships and naval
vessels tied up all along the Embarcadero.
However, after the completion of the Bay Bridge and the rapid
decline of Ferries and the Ferry Building, the neighborhood fell
into decline. The transition to container shipping, which moved
most shipping to Oakland, led to further decline. Automobile
transit efforts led to the Embarcadero Freeway being built in the
1960s. This improved automobile access to the Bay Bridge, but
detracted aesthetically from the city. For 30 years, the highway
divided the waterfront and the Ferry Building from downtown. It was
torn down in 1991, after being severely damaged in the 1989 Loma
Prieta earthquake.
After the freeway had been cleared, massive redevelopment began
as a grand palm-lined boulevard was created, squares and plazas
were created and/or restored, and Muni's N Judah and T Third Street
and F Market & Wharves lines were extended to run along it,
with the N and T lines going south from Market Street to 4th and
King Streets (at AT&T Park and the Caltrain station) and the F
line going north from Market to Fisherman's Wharf. The Market
Street Railway is also planning a new ‘E’ line to run up the
Embarcadero, past the wharves, to Aquatic Park.
A sculpture, "Cupid's Span" by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van
Bruggen, was built in 2003 along the Rincon Park area. Resembling
Cupid's bow and arrow with the arrow implanted in the ground, the
statue symbolizes the place where Tony Bennett "left his heart"."
("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Embarcadero_(San_Francisco)"
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