The Mechanics Monument features a massive bronze sculpture group anchored by a central figure of a blacksmith holding a sledgehammer. Douglas Tilden designed this fountain in nineteen oh one to celebrate the industrial laborers who built…
SF Lost Shoreline Walk
This walk traces the boundary where the bay met the land before the Gold Rush, revealing the buried shipwrecks and brass shoreline markers hidden under modern streets.
Listen to this tour in the Mira app →
1. Mechanics Monument
2. Russ Building
The Russ Building features a Gothic terra cotta facade that rises thirty-one stories above Montgomery Street. When it opened in nineteen twenty-seven, it held the title of the tallest building in San Francisco. Charles Russ, a German…
3. Map of Old San Francisco Shoreline and Leidesdorff Mural
The mural on the side of the building depicts the shoreline of San Francisco as it appeared before the nineteen oh six earthquake, when the water actually reached Montgomery Street. William Leidesdorff, the man who built the city’s first…
4. 505 Sansome St
Five hundred five Sansome Street features a distinctive, jagged glass facade that cuts into the skyline like a set of stairs. Transamerica Corporation built this tower in nineteen seventy-two to serve as its headquarters, right next to the…
5. Transamerica Redwood Park
Fifty redwood trees brought down from the Santa Cruz Mountains stand in a dense, quiet grove between the concrete towers of the Financial District. This half-acre park sits at the base of the Transamerica Pyramid, occupying the space where…
6. Portsmouth Square Park
Portsmouth Square sits on a steep slope, marked by a dense thicket of elderly men playing intense games of Chinese chess while others practise tai chi in the morning light. This patch of concrete served as the original plaza for the…
7. The Old Ship Saloon
The Old Ship Saloon occupies the hull of the Arkansas, a three-masted ship that wrecked on a reef outside the Golden Gate in eighteen forty-nine. After the vessel was dragged ashore and embedded into the mud of the burgeoning waterfront,…