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The Crazy Optimism of Market Street
In 1847 when San Francisco had a population of just 400 settlers, town engineer Jasper O'Farrell came up with an insane plan for a 'Market Street'. He envisioned the sleepy pioneer camp having a magnificent diagonally-running boulevard, 120-foot wide and three miles long stretching from the waterfront to Mission Delores. He based his design on the grand Champs-Elysées in Paris. What made this plan even more crazy was the proposed boulevard was to be located a half mile from the town center and its path was blocked by 90-foot tall sand dunes.
Amazingly within a two years gold was discovered and tens of thousands of new residents poured to tiny San Francisco. Within a few years the sand dunes had been leveled, and O'Farrell's vision was realized when Market Street was built to accommodate the growing metropolis. In 1917 the beautiful triple-light lampposts, shown above, were installed along the entire length of Market Street. Known as the 'Path of Gold Lampposts' their bas-relief bases honor the city's gold miners and pioneers who dreamed of, and built, San Francisco.
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MAP G-14 ]
2 Comments:
These lampposts are magnificent! Thanks for dating them for us, I'd always been kind of curious about them.
Did you see the paper? Someone just bought the historic Hibernia Bank building in the TL. Maybe they'll do something nice with it. I really wish for a friendlier Market St., kind of the way I remember it in the early, early 80's or was it all a dream?
I always wondered about these lampposts and their bas reliefs. Thanks for providing the history behind them!
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