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District 1–Northwest
Commonly referred to as The Richmond District, District 1 is primarily a residential area sandwiched between the Presidio and Golden Gate Parks. Adjacent to Ocean Beach, Richmond District residents have access to a wide array of outdoor activities and fascinating historical sites.
This prosperous area is filled with stunning Victorian, Edwardian, and Marina style architecture and is considered by many to be one of the most desirable areas in San Francisco. The Lake Street and Sea Cliff neighborhoods are filled with Victorian and Edwardian mansions, while Central and Outer Richmond feature the prevalent Marina style home.
Described by one resident as, “a vibrant neighborhood walking distance to some of the city’s hidden natural gems,” the Richmond District offers an array of shops and restaurants, an outlet for outdoor exploration and a small town feel.
An ethnically mixed area, where immigrant Russians and East European Jews settled in the late teens and twenties. Businesses, restaurants, bookstores and the Russian Cathedral on Geary still testify to their presence. The largest ethnic group is the Chinese, who, overflowing from Chinatown, found it easier to acquire property here than in the inner-city areas. The commercial strips along Geary and Clement are the new Chinatown. The residential boom in this area began in 1912 with the opening of the Municipal Railway line on Geary Boulevard, providing good transportation to downtown. The next boom followed World War II and succeeded in filling all of the blocks to the ocean.
Golden Gate Park borders the Richmond. In 1871 William Hammond Hall, an ex-army engineer, was appointed as the parks first superintendent. Within 5 years, he designed the park, figured out how to anchor the sand dunes by planting imported sand grass and how to make the trees grow, and he had begun at the east end to landscape the barren waste. Uncle John McLaren later took over the work. The park that Hall designed and McLaren built is one of the great monuments of romantic landscape design. The park is perennially green, since most of the vegetation is not deciduous and there are beautiful gardens throughout. Also, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the California Academy of Sciences occupy the park. The ‘de Young’ is currently being re-designed by noted architects Herzog and de Meuron.
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