© McCormack's Guides
Zip Code: 94115
Located
just west of city hall in the downtown. Sometimes called the Fillmore District.
In some descriptions, the Fillmore District is included in the Western Addition
along with Hayes Valley, Japantown and Cathedral Hill.
A mixed
neighborhood where the poor blend with the middle class and well-to-do. On some
streets, concerns about crime.
In 2005,
patrols were stepped up and in a few places surveillance cameras installed but
shootings still occur. In 2007, following several shooting deaths, city hall
intervened with more police and civic attention. Police say that much of 2007 violence
stems from a drug war between two gangs.
Click for regional or detailed map
This is
another neighborhood where some streets have high crime and many low —
within a short distance.
Home to
the 5-acre Japanese Cultural and Trade Center, which includes a consulate,
hotel, restaurant, two Japanese-language theaters and three Buddhist temples.
At Cathedral
Hill, St. Mary’s, the last hurrah for grand churches in San Francisco. Organ
employed for concerts.
Large Kaiser Medical Center, renovated
and expanded.
Before
World War II, about 5,300 Japanese lived in the neighborhood. When they were
interned, thousands of newcomers, hired to work in the shipyards and war
industries, moved in, and the housing units multiplied. After the war, many
Japanese returned and an effort was made to provide the neighborhood with
decent housing.
The
Western Addition borders the fire line of the 1906 earthquake. East of the line
homes were destroyed, west saved. The district salvaged a great store of
Victorians. In a misguided effort that supposedly lost more housing than it
produced, many Victorians were demolished and replaced by public projects. Over
the last 25 years, the remaining Victorians, which had faded with neglect, made
a comeback. Many have been restored. Remodelings are common.
The public
housing first went into large buildings that artistically and socially fell out
of favor. They were replaced several years ago by 193 townhouses that have won
praise for their design.
The
Western Addition also includes the upscale Fillmore Center, 1,113 apartments
over five blocks (Steiner and Turk streets). Homes and apartments on the northern border of the district
glide into Pacific Heights, the most prestigious neighborhood in the City.
Commute a
nothing. Walk to downtown, opera, Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco’s largest
library.
Summer fog often makes its way down to Western Addition.
In the
1960s, music impresario Bill Graham took over the Fillmore Auditorium and made
it famous. Among acts and people who played The Fillmore: Janis Joplin, The
Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin,
Otis Redding and more.
Graham
later moved about six blocks west but returned to the original location in the
1980s. In the 1990s, the Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the auditorium and
forced its closure. Renovated and strengthened, it was reopened in 2004 and
remains one of the city's great music halls.
Building
on this, the city is trying to make the Western Addition (or its Fillmore
blocks) into a jazz district. The opera house and the symphony hall are within six
blocks.
• On a
somber note, Jim Jones in the 1970s ran his Peoples Temple out of a former
synagogue in the Western Addition and went out of his way to cultivate local
politicians (something the City would love to forget.) When complaints surfaced
and reporters wrote critical articles, Jones fled to Guyana with about 900
followers, many from the Western Addition, and later almost everyone drank
poisoned Kool Aid and died.
The Peoples
Temple was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and demolished.
• Library
closed for remodeling. Will reopen in 2008.
• Yoshi’s
to open a jazz club in the Fillmore.
