Historic Landmarks of San Francisco

Rincon Hill, bounded by Spear, 2nd, Folsom, and Brannen Streets, was, from the mid-1850s into the 1860s, San Francisco's most fashionable residential district. Here, drawn by the pleasant, sunny climates, lived William Chapman Ralston, Henry Halleck, John Parrott, Peter Donahue, Albert Sidney Johnston, Henry Miller, William T. Sherman, and the McAllisters.

The wooded southern slope of the hill became South Park, an exclusive enclave founded in 1852 by an Englishman named George Gordon. This 12-acre tract is bounded by Second, Third, Bryant, and Brannan Streets. Called the single California imitation of a London crescent, South Park consisted, in 1854, of seventeen brick residences in English, Roman, and Italian style. Built on 12-vara lots (vara is an obsolete Spanish unit of measurement roughly analogous to a yard), these houses each cost around $2,000.

Third Street was eventually planked from Market to South Park, and the area became the home of several aristocratic Southern families. Public buildings on Rincon Hill included the 1857 U.S. Marine Hospital, built on the eastern slope, and St. Mary's Hospital, constructed in 1860 on the southern slope. A three-story brick settlement house was built on the northern edge of South Park in the 1860s by Phoebe Apperson Hearst.

The period between 1869 and 1906 witnessed the decline of Rincon Hill as a residential area. When Second Street was cut through to accommodate traffic between downtown and the Pacific Mail docks at Brannan and Second, well-to-do families began moving out. Many migrated to newly-fashionable Nob Hill. The early 1870s saw the development of a factory district south of Rincon Hill. The area had a brief spurt of notoriety when, on July 5, 1934, it was the scene of the Battle of Rincon Hill, a fight between striking longshoremen and non-strikers.

Much of the hill was leveled in the construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Rincon Hill is today covered with commercial buildings and warehouses. It is dominated by a massive pier of the Bay Bridge and associated freeway structures. There is no marker at the present time.

A plaque (dedicated in 2011 and located approximately 900 feet northeast of the site of the original plaque) is now to be found at the northwest corner of Bryant and Beale Streets.