The Marina District is a neighborhood located in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. The neighborhood sits on the site of the 1915

Panama–Pacific International Exposition The Panama–Pacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California, United States, from February 20 to December 4, 1915. Its stated purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely se ...

, staged after the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

to celebrate the reemergence of the city. Aside from the

Palace of Fine Arts The Palace of Fine Arts is a monumental structure located in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, originally constructed for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition to exhibit works of art. Completely rebuilt from 1964 to ...

(POFA), all other buildings were demolished to make the current neighborhood. The Marina currently has the highest

non-Hispanic white Non-Hispanic whites or Non-Latino whites are Americans who are classified as "white", and are not of Hispanic (also known as "Latino") heritage. The United States Census Bureau defines ''white'' to include European Americans, Middle Eastern Amer ...

resident percentage of any recognized neighborhood in San Francisco.

Location

The area is bounded to the east by

Van Ness Avenue Van Ness Avenue is a north–south thoroughfare in San Francisco, California. Originally named Marlette Street, the street was renamed Van Ness Avenue in honor of the city's sixth mayor, James Van Ness. The main part of Van Ness Avenue runs fro ...

and

Fort Mason Fort Mason, in San Francisco, California originated as a coastal defense site during the American Civil War. The nucleus of the property was owned by John C. Frémont and disputes over compensation by the United States continued into 1968. In 188 ...

; on the west by Lyon Street and the Presidio National Park; on the south by Cow Hollow and Lombard St, which bisects the southern edge of the Marina District. The northern half of the Marina is a shoreline of the

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...

, and features the

Marina Green The Marina Green in San Francisco, California, is a expanse of grass between Fort Mason and the Presidio. It is adjacent to San Francisco Bay, and this location provides good views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Angel Island, Alcatraz Island, and ...

, a park adjacent to the municipal boat marina from which the neighborhood takes its name. Much of the Marina is built on former

landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...

, and is susceptible to

soil liquefaction Soil liquefaction occurs when a cohesionless saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses strength and stiffness in response to an applied stress such as shaking during an earthquake or other sudden change in stress condition, in ...

during strong earthquakes. This phenomenon caused extensive damage to the entire neighborhood during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

History

The area in the 19th century prior to the 1906 earthquake consisted of bay shallows, tidal pools, sand dunes, and marshland similar to nearby

Crissy Field Crissy Field is a public recreation area on the northern shore of the San Francisco Peninsula in California, United States, located just east of the Golden Gate Bridge. It includes restored tidal marsh and beaches. Crissy Field is a former Un ...

. Human habitation and development came in the mid to late 19th century in the form of a sandwall and of a road from the nearby Presidio to Fort Mason. Most of the sand dunes were leveled out and a hodgepodge of wharves and industrial plants was built extending from what is now Laguna Street to Steiner Street. However, all of this was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. During reconstruction of the city after the 1906 earthquake, the area was chosen as the site of the

. Although rubble from the earthquake was used as part of the land reclamation, most of the landfill came from dredging mud and sand from the bottom of the Bay. After the end of the exposition in 1915, the land was sold to private developers, who tore down nearly all of the fair's attractions and developed the area into a residential neighborhood. This major redevelopment was completed in the 1920s. In the 1930s, with the completion of the nearby

Golden Gate Bridge The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Pen ...

, Lombard Street (now Highway 101) was widened, and soon developed into a strip of roadside

motels A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central lobby. Entering dictionaries ...

. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused severe liquefaction of the fill upon which the neighborhood is built, causing major damage including a small

firestorm A firestorm is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. It is most commonly a natural phenomenon, created during some of the largest bushfires and wildfires. Although the term has been used ...

. Firefighters resorted to pumping water directly from the Bay, to replace water unavailable from broken

water main A water distribution system is a part of water supply network with components that carry potable water from a centralized treatment plant or wells to consumers to satisfy residential, commercial, industrial and fire fighting requirements. Definit ...

s. The neighborhood was quickly rebuilt. Physically, the neighborhood appears to have changed very little since its construction in the 1920s.

Attractions

The neighborhood is most famous for the

, which until 2013 housed the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum and children's educational center, and which takes up much of the western section of the neighborhood. The Palace is the only building left standing in its original location within the 1915 Exposition fairgrounds. The grounds around the Palace are a year-round attraction for tourists and locals, and are used as a location for weddings and wedding party photographs for couples. Chestnut Street is another attraction for locals and tourists. Stretching from Fillmore Street down to Lyon Street, Chestnut is lined with a collection of stores to shop, as well as restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops and bars. The neighborhood is also noted for its demographics, which since the 1980s have shifted from mostly middle-class families and pensioners, to professionals in their twenties and thirties. These now make up more than half of the population, although a small, affluent older population remains. San Francisco's

Academy of Art University The Academy of Art University (AAU or ART U), formerly Academy of Art College and Richard Stephens Academy of Art, is a private for-profit art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded as the Academy of Advertising Art by Richard S. ...

has a campus housing building at the Southern edge of the neighborhood on Lombard Street.

Government and infrastructure

The San Francisco Police Department Northern Station serves the Marina District.

Education

It is in the

San Francisco Unified School District San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), established in 1851, is the only public school district within the City and County of San Francisco, and the first in the state of California. Under the management of the San Francisco Board of Educa ...

(SFUSD) and is within the Sherman Elementary School attendance area. Sherman has about 20 teachers.Sherman Webster Elementary School
"

. Retrieved on April 18, 2018.

References

External links

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Google maps
{{authority control Neighborhoods in San Francisco World's fair sites in California Panama–Pacific International Exposition Populated coastal places in California