Hayes Valley

About Hayes Valley

Hayes Valley takes its name from Thomas Hayes, a city official who began developing the area in the 1850s. He laid out a suburban resort called Hayes Park and ran a rail line to it from downtown, which opened the surrounding blocks to housing.

For most of the 20th century the neighborhood was defined by the Central Freeway, an elevated structure built in 1959 that cut through the area and held property values down. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged it. After a long campaign by residents, the freeway came down in stages: the northern section in the early 1990s and the stretch over what is now Octavia Boulevard by 2003.

The land the freeway left behind became Octavia Boulevard and Patricia’s Green, the small park at Hayes and Octavia that opened in 2005. The blocks of Victorian storefronts along Hayes Street filled in with shops and restaurants over the years that followed.