Get to Know: The Western Addition
Saint Mary’s Cathedral towers over residences in the Western Addition. Photo by Sean Timberlake.
The Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco is a vibrant and diverse community located in the heart of the city. Historically, the name refers to a wide swath of land between Larkin and Divisadero Streets. However, for the purposes of real estate, we are referring to the SFAR’s designation of subdistrict 6d, which is an irregular bloc bounded by Divisadero Street to the west, Geary Boulevard to the north, Gough Street to the east, and a zig-zagging line of McAllister, Fulton, and Golden Gate to the south. Saint Mary’s Cathedral punctuates the northeast corner.
In the 1850s, the Western Addition was developed as a residential neighborhood. The area was platted by the Van Ness Ordinance, which created a grid of streets that ran west from Larkin Street to Divisadero Street. The Western Addition quickly became a popular neighborhood for wealthy San Franciscans, who built many large Victorian homes, the largest concentration of which remain in adjacent Alamo Square (6b) and Lower Pacific Heights (6c) subdistricts.
The Western Addition was a significant home to the African American community. After the Civil War, many African Americans moved to San Francisco in search of a better life. The stretch along Fillmore Street became the center of African American culture in San Francisco, and it was home to many jazz clubs and other businesses. It was often referred to as “The Harlem of the West.”
The area also had a significant Asian American population. However, during World War II, the federal government forcibly relocated Japanese Americans living in the Western Addition to internment camps. This left a significant gap in the community and the businesses they owned, which struggled to survive in their absence.
Following the war, inner cities around the country saw a decline in population as a boon of affluence allowed people to move to the suburbs. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Western Addition was considered blighted, and became the site of a major urban renewal project. The city government razed some 2,500 Victorian homes in the area and replaced them with high-rise apartments and public housing projects. This urban renewal project shuttered businesses and displaced nearly 5,000 households in the Western Addition — most especially African Americans — and it had a devastating impact on the neighborhood. Similar urban renewal projects happened in cities across the country, almost always with an outsized impact on minority communities.
Today, housing stock is commingled with a variety of mixed-income housing projects, a legacy of the urban renewal. Due to the era and density of the bulk of housing in the district, home values are comparatively moderate. Still, the area offers much, with good transit options and vibrant commercial districts along Fillmore and Divisadero Streets.