SF Creativity

The Richmond District, where you are currently walking, owes its official name to a settler named George Turner Marsh. In 1876, he built his home near the corner of twelfth Avenue and Clement Street and named the property Richmond House after his birthplace in Australia. The city eventually adopted the name for the entire surrounding neighborhood in 1890. Before this designation, the area was known as the Outside Lands because it sat well beyond the original boundaries of San Francisco. For much of its early history, this windswept expanse of sand dunes served as a rural landscape for dairy farms and ranches rather than the dense residential neighborhood you see today.