One of the wealthiest districts in the
city sits at the very northern tip of San Francisco with views
of the Golden Gate Bridge. The commercial center runs along
Chestnut and Union streets. Most of the Marina was built up
to celebrate the rebuilding of San Francisco after the earthquake
in 1906. Ironically, much of it was poorly built and was damaged
in the earthquake in 1989. The Exploritorium is attached on
the West side and has over 500 exhibits of light and color,
sound and music, patterns of motion, language and other natural
phenomena. Marina Green, a stretch of green grass running
along the edge of the Bay, is a favorite place for jogging,
strolling, picnicking and kite flying. Spanish soldiers established
Adjacent Fort Mason Center, located at Marina Boulevard &
Buchanan, in 1797. Former military warehouses and piers now
house museums, art and cultural groups. Reach the 24-hour
information line at 415-979-3010.
The story of San Francisco's Marina District is the story
of land and water repeatedly and dramatically altered by nature
and by human development. Eight thousand years ago, American
Indians lived on the dunes and near the tidal marshlands that
today are the sites of apartment buildings, luxurious homes
and some of the city's trendiest shops and restaurants. When
the Spanish arrived here in 1776 and established the Presidio
-- on the Marina's western border -- the marshlands looked
pretty much the same as they would over a century later, in
1906, when the city of San Francisco was shaken and then burned
by its first devastating earthquake and the resulting fire.
It wasn't until the aftermath of the big quake that major
development began in the Marina. Tons and tons of brick and
rock rubble from destroyed downtown buildings were brought
over and dumped into the Marina's marshlands, forming an initial
(and unstable) foundation for development. A few years later,
when the site was chosen as the location of the 1915 Panama-Pacific
International Exposition, San Francisco had the impetus it
needed to turn what began as a haphazard dumping ground into
a breathtaking exhibit of architectural beauty.
The Panama-Pacific, and its iconic surviving building the
Palace of Fine Arts, introduced the city to the commercial
and residential development possibilities of the recently
formed prime waterfront real estate. In the decades following
the exposition, apartment buildings, homes and businesses
sprouted up rapidly and in great numbers until the Marina
had become one of San Francisco's most desirable places to
live, work and visit. Until 1989, that is, when another earthquake
rocked the city and sparked 27 fires citywide, including the
devastating Marina blaze, and many of the area's poorly supported
buildings collapsed atop the unstable ground. The Loma Prieta
earthquake was a wake-up call for Marina developers; the reconstruction
effort brought with it new standards of earthquake-sturdy
construction, and within a decade the Marina had been rebuilt
and revamped with a shiny new face and s stronger bone structure.
Today the apartment buildings, shops and restaurants seem
to be bursting at their seams with beautiful, young and fit
20- and 30-somethings. The singles scene is hopping on Friday
and Saturday nights, with lots of fresh-faced postgrads with
cocktails in one hand and cell phones in the other. Union
is arguably the best street in the city to window-shop the
hours away on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and, a few blocks
down, Chestnut has an incredible variety of high-quality restaurants
catering to every palate.
If you're looking for diversity or an edgy or progressive
feel, the Marina probably isn't your neighborhood -- unless
you count Fort Mason, which hosts a bounty of cultural museums
and nonprofits. Overall, this is the land of SUVs, chic fashion
and killer spa treatments. Love it, or leave it to the pretty
young things who call it home or home-away-from-home.
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