Financial District (San Francisco)
The Financial District is the northern part of downtown San Francisco in California.
Geography
The district is characterized by a number of skyscrapers and lies between Grant Street east of the shopping district on Union Square, Sacramento Street and Columbus Street, south of Chinatown and North Beach, as well as at the Embarcadero, which runs along the coast. The tallest buildings in the city are located here, including the Bank of America and the Transamerica Pyramid, but other high buildings such as 101 California Street and 345 California Street.
Many large companies, law firms and financial institutions have settled in this neighborhood. Among other things, it houses the corporate headquarters of VISA, Wells Fargo Bank, the Charles Schwab Corporation, McKesson, Barclays Global Investors, GAP, Union Bank of California and the twelfth regional Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. Montgomery Street, "Wall Street on the west coast ", is considered as the center of the district. There are many shopping centers in the area, such as the Crocker Galleria, the Embarcadero Center, the Ferry Building, and the Rincon Center.
History
The district was the center of European and American colonization under Spanish and later Mexican rule. According to the American annexation and the California gold rush, the area has undergone a rapid upswing and the bay, which originally reached to the Battery Street, was filled up to the present The Embarcadero. Prosperity through the gold rush and increasing trade transformed the district 's most important financial center of the West Coast and numerous banks and businesses settled in the area. The first and only skyscraper in the West Coast were built in the area along Market Street.
The neighborhood was by the 1906 earthquake largely destroyed ( but still has the skyscrapers are miraculously ) and rebuilt. Due to nationwide height restrictions because of the risk of earthquakes, the buildings of the district initially remained relatively low. But after an easing of height restrictions had been made as a result of new techniques to increase the stability and improve the connection between the structure and foundation, a true skyscraper boom was triggered from the late 1950s. This accelerated under Mayor Dianne Feinstein during the 1980s. This, pejoratively as " Manhattanization " designated form of urban development, triggering protests from all over the city as it had already years earlier made it in a similar form because of the construction of freeways. As a result, very strict rules regarding the maximum height were introduced citywide.
Current height restrictions (which have been relaxed over the years, however, again), population growth and changes in demand on the urban real estate market led to a shift in urban development in the direction of South of Market. Instead of office buildings increasingly expensive condos and hotels were built, including the Four Seasons Hotel, The Paramount ( the tallest with 40 floors apartment building in San Francisco and on the West Coast ) and the Millennium Tower which is currently still under construction.