Neighborhood History

Telegraph Hill is more than a matter of views; it is a way of life. On the streets, climbing the wooden steps or narrow paths, perhaps passing some of the oldest houses in San Francisco, it is a microcosm of San Francisco. Not only have local events on the Hill been duplicated in other parts of the city, but from a perch on Telegraph Hill a series of residents could have observed most of the major events in San Francisco history.

They would have witnessed the arrival of Captain John B. Montgomery and the hoisting of the flag of the United States, as well as the arrival a few years later of gold seekers from all over the world. Admiral Dewey’s return from the Philippines, the great fire of 1906 and the secret ship movements of World War II, Korea and Vietnam would all have passed around them. They would have noted the growth of San Francisco to the south and west to accommodate new arrivals, along with changes and developments in North Beach and the immediate neighborhood.

Telegraph Hill has had a series of names in years gone by. Allegedly the Spanish called it Loma Alta. Others referred to it as Clark’s Point, Prospect Hill, Signal Hill, Windmill Hill, Goat Hill and Tin Can Hill. Those living here today speak of it loyally and proudly as “The Hill,” a common practice among the residents of other San Francisco hills, we are told.

According to some versions of San Francisco history, Telegraph Hill was noted by Portola in 1769 and seven years later de Anza gave it the name Loma Alta. Romantic as the thought of these events is , nowhere will they be found in the diaries of Crespi and Font, who accompanied these expeditions.

Scant attention was given to Telegraph Hill in the early days of Yerba Buena. In the early 1840’s settlement was limited to the dairy ranch of Juana Briones on the west side of the Hill near Filbert and Powell streets. Senora Briones also maintained a potato patch in what is now Washington Square. After she moved to a larger ranch down the Peninsula in the 1870’s her Telegraph Hill property, referred to as the Spanish Lot, was used for baseball games and even today it is an athletic field.

During the Mexican War, San Francisco Bay rested quietly under Mexican rule until Captain John B. Montgomery sailed the Portsmouth into the harbor and raised the U.S. flag at the plaza on July 9, 1846. The plaza has taken the name of the ship, while the captain’s name is remembered in the street that today links the financial district with Telegraph Hill.

From San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill by David Myrick. © 1972. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.

Telegraph Hill
September 2002
by Christopher P. Verplanck

Even people with only a passing familiarity of San Francisco know that the rocky prominence north of downtown capped by Coit Tower is Telegraph Hill. What many probably don’t know is that scenic Telegraph Hill is one of San Francisco’s oldest neighborhoods, an enclave of impassable street right-of-ways, cozy pre-1906 workingmen’s cottages, lush public gardens, and modernist apartment buildings. Largely spared by the earthquake and subsequent firestorm that destroyed most of Victorian San Francisco in 1906, Telegraph Hill is home to San Francisco’s largest concentration of pre-1870 structures, with a handful of buildings dating back to the 1850s.

Rising to an elevation of 284 feet above sea level, the Hill’s location on San Francisco Bay provides tremendous views of downtown San Francisco, Angel Island, Alcatraz, Marin County and the East Bay. For decades an isolated neighborhood of artists and working-class immigrants, Telegraph Hill was gradually transformed after the Second World War into one of San Francisco’s most desirable residential neighborhoods. This article will trace the history of the core of Telegraph Hill, a six-block enclave defined by Kearny Street to the west, the Greenwich Street steps to the north, Sansome Street to the east and Green Street to the south.

Topography is the defining characteristic of Telegraph Hill. Jasper O’Farrell’s gridiron street pattern, however, did not defer to the rocky Hill’s steep grades. As a result, several of the district’s streets, including Filbert, Greenwich, Napier, Darrell and parts of Alta and Union, were designated as impassable. As a necessity, several of these right-of-ways were streets in name only, taking the form of public footpaths or street stairs. Today, Union Street and Telegraph Hill Boulevard are the only means of vehicular access to the uppermost sections of the Hill. Before the Second World War, residents converted several of the street right-of-ways into lush public gardens. The most famous are, of course, the Grace Marchant Gardens, composed of lush plantings that flank both sides of the Filbert Street Steps.

During the Spanish and Mexican periods, Telegraph Hill was called Loma Alta, which in English means “High Hill.” Before the Americans began to arrive in large numbers in Yerba Buena Cove to trade with the residents of the small Mexican pueblo, Loma Alta was largely ignored. The notable exception was Juana Briones’ dairy ranch, which was located on the Hill’s west side, near the present-day intersection of Powell and Filbert Streets. In the years immediately preceding the American conquest of California, the foot of Loma Alta served for the most part as an informal burial ground for foreign sailors.

The history of Loma Alta began to change shortly after Captain John B. Montgomery sailed into San Francisco Bay on the U.S.S. Portsmouth on July 9, 1846, and raised the U.S. flag over Yerba Buena, which was renamed San Francisco a year later. Two days after his arrival, Captain Montgomery ordered a fort to be constructed “on the hill off the point of Yerba Buena.” Fort Montgomery, as it was called, was constructed of adobe bricks hauled up the north slope. It was the first recorded permanent structure on Loma Alta. Happily for the Americans, Fort Montgomery never fired a shot and quickly fell into disuse, although not before bequeathing its name to Battery Street.

During the Gold Rush and the early American periods, Telegraph Hill continued to be known variously as Loma Alta, its old Spanish name, or increasingly as Prospect Hill, because of the bird’s-eye view it offered of the Golden Gate and the Bay. This view made the Hill a perfect site for observing ocean traffic arriving from the Golden Gate. Soon, several businessmen erected a semaphore on its crest. In communication with a similar facility at Point Lobos, crews posted at Telegraph Hill would relay information provided by observers at Point Lobos and telegraph this information to subscribers in the city below. The information included the name of the ship and likely cargo. Advance knowledge of such things allowed business owners to have a leg up over their rivals, giving them the opportunity to buy or sell certain commodities prior to the arrival of the ship in port. Gradually Telegraph Hill became the name of choice, and from the 1860s onward it was known by no other name.

The unprecedented influx of immigrants into San Francisco during the Gold Rush led to the creation of what Roland Barth called the “Instant City.” During the brief four-year period between 1848 and 1852, the dusty pueblo of approximately 1,000 people mushroomed into a sprawling, ramshackle city of almost 35,000 inhabitants. The newcomers initially erected their tents and shacks on the flatter lands west of Yerba Buena Cove (later filled in, where much of the financial district now sits). But land was in short supply and within a short time, their dwellings began to creep up the south slope of Telegraph Hill. Ed Gilbert of the Alta California, a state-wide newspaper based in San Francisco, described the scene:

“This hill and those around which have stood for so long, like giant sentinels, guarding the slumbers of our broad and beautiful bay, are fast becoming covered with houses, and their original appearance are long be lost and forgotten.”

During the 1850s and 1860s, inexpensive land prices and proximity to the maritime jobs available on the Northeast Waterfront began to attract working-class- cottage builders to the top of Telegraph Hill. Two of the Hill’s earliest dwellings were built during this early period: 1301 Montgomery (ca. 1850) and 291 Union (ca. 1854). Today, 1301 Montgomery is possibly the oldest brick building in San Francisco. The second-oldest documented building on Telegraph Hill is a tall wood-frame dwelling located at 291 Union Street. John Cooney, an Irish immigrant grocer, constructed this flat-fronted Italianate in 1854. The building contained a grocery store that did business on the bottom floor until 1906, and the building itself was owned by the Cooney family until 1937. The cottages located next door, at 287 Union, were constructed in 1857. Although altered since, these simple dwellings with their steeply pitched gable roofs and scroll saw-cut bargeboards are typical of many of the dwellings constructed in the neighborhood during the 1850s. Another important early dwelling located near the crest of Telegraph Hill is 9 Calhoun Terrace. The construction date for this unique balconied “Carpenter Gothic” dwelling is unknown. The first occupant was a man named Dr. David G. “Yankee” Robinson, a talented physician-cum-comedian-cum-theater impresario. A final example is 31 Alta Street, a three-and-a-half story, gable-roofed dwelling with a two-level balcony. Early photographs indicate that this building, one of San Francisco’s oldest, has scarcely been altered since it was built by a Captain Andrews in 1852.

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