F I R S TP R E V819NEXTLAST

Giant Propeller, Financial District
San Francisco's Financial District was build on shipping, literally. Today's high rise office buildings are built on the ghosts of rotting, abandoned sailing ships from the 1800s which were filled in with dirt and built upon. Early San Francisco financiers provided capital (at shocking rates) to miners, sailors, loggers, railroad workers, farmers, and builders for the goods that the new city needed. In addition they financed steamship and stagecoach lines as well as companies like Southern Pacific Railway, Western Union, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, Pacific Gas and Electric, Levi Strauss, Gumps, and Shreve and Company. The brokerages, bankers, and insurance companies of "Wall Street West" suffered a huge setback during the Great 1906 Earthquake and Fire but emerged to make San Francisco a financial giant on the Pacific Rim.
[ MAP G-15 ]