Financial District
About Financial District
The Financial District is built on the buried edge of the bay. In the Gold Rush years this was Yerba Buena Cove, and Montgomery Street ran along the original waterfront. Ships that arrived in 1849 and 1850 were abandoned by crews who left for the gold fields, and the city filled the cove with sand and debris around them. The remains of dozens of those ships are still under the streets.
As the waterfront moved east onto the new land, the district became the banking center of the West Coast. A.P. Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in 1904. After the 1906 earthquake and fire, he made loans from a makeshift desk on the wharf to help people rebuild, and the bank later grew into Bank of America. The Bank of Italy building still stands at 552 Montgomery Street.
The district was rebuilt after 1906 and kept growing upward. The Transamerica Pyramid at 600 Montgomery Street was completed in 1972 and was the tallest building in the city until Salesforce Tower passed it in 2018. A half-acre redwood grove, Transamerica Redwood Park, sits at its base and is open to the public.
Filmed in Financial District
All San Francisco films →62 productions filmed around Financial District, oldest first.
1941The Maltese Falcon
1950D.O.A
1954The Caine Mutiny
1958The Lineup
1958Vertigo
1962Experiment in Terror
1971Dirty Harry
1973Magnum Force
1974The Conversation
1974The Towering Inferno
1974Herbie Rides Again
1974Freebie and the Bean
1977High Anxiety
1978A Night Full of Rain
1979Time After Time
1980Serial
1981Chu Chu and the Philly Flash
1983The Right Stuff
1985A View to a Kill
1986Quicksilver+42more on recordEvery film shot in San Francisco →Where to Eat
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Where to Drink
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Things to Do
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People in Plazas: Free Lunchtime Concerts in Downtown San Francisco
Concerts start at noon and run about an hour, so time a lunch break around them. Check peopleinplazas.org the morning of, since two plazas often have shows in the same hour and the lineup changes every week. Pick Rincon Center when the wind is up on Market Street; it is the one indoor venue in the series.
Transamerica Redwood Park
A half-acre redwood grove at the base of the Transamerica Pyramid. It's free too.
Lotta’s Fountain
A cast iron fountain at the intersection of Market, Geary, and Kearny, donated to the city by actress Lotta Crabtree on September 9, 1875. It survived the 1906 earthquake and served as a message wall for finding missing family members. Since 1919, survivors and their descendants have gathered here every April 18 at 5:12am. Free. On a traffic island downtown.
Heineman Building
A 10-story Edwardian on a lot barely 20 feet wide on Bush Street, designed by George Applegarth in 1910 as a necktie and suspender factory. Glazed terra cotta, hammered copper panels, prismatic bow windows. Look up between Battery and Sansome.
