Belden Place | |
|---|---|
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  Belden Place Location within Central San Francisco | |
| Coordinates: 37°47′29″N122°24′14″W / 37.79125°N 122.40376°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | California |
| City | San Francisco |
Belden Place is a narrow alley in the Financial District of San Francisco, California that serves as the hub of the city's small French American community.
Locally the street is sometimes called Belden Lane, Belden Alley, or Belden Street. The surrounding neighborhood, which includes adjacent alleys and several blocks of Bush Street, is sometimes, though not universally, referred to as San Francisco's French Quarter for its historic ties to early French immigrants, and its popular contemporary French restaurants and institutions.
Named after Josiah Belden, an early California pioneer, San Jose's first mayor, and real estate businessman. Belden owned a portion "of the block on the east side of Kearny Street, between Bush and Pine running through to Belden Place. He built the Harpending block on the south side of Market Street, above first and the Belden block on the southwest corner of Montgomery and Bush Streets. [1]
Later, Belden sold much of the Market Street property to Charles Crocker. The area was home to San Francisco's first French settlers. Approximately 3,000, sponsored by the French government, arrived near the end of the Gold Rush in 1851. [2] According to historian Gladys Hansen, the French shared Dupont Street (now Grant Avenue) with early Chinese settlers during the early days of Chinatown, and were more sympathetic than others to their concerns. French novelist Alexandre Dumas, père, in his 1852 first-person account A Gil Blas in California, describes local Chinese cooks experimenting with French cuisine. The enclave persisted, despite subsequent waves of Chinese, Italian, Irish, and other immigrants to the area. [3]
Belden Place itself is a one-lane, one block long street running south from Pine Street to Bush Street, parallel to and in between Montgomery and Kearny streets, immediately south of the Bank of America tower. It is roughly between Chinatown and the Financial District.
In 1990, restaurateurs Olivier Azancot and Eric Klein opened Cafe Bastille, the mainstay that set the modern tone for the area. The French, Italian, and Catalan establishments are popular with locals, tourists, and office workers, and are generally considered on par with the city's best casual full-service European restaurants. [4] Notable restaurants in the alley itself include Sam's Grill, Cafe Bastille, Cafe Tiramisu, Plouf, B44, Belden Taverna, and Brindisi Cucina di Mare. Nearby are Café de la Presse (though modest and unassuming, a favorite hangout of the city's political and social elite) and Le Central. Also nearby are the Alliance Française, the French consulate, and the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church (where mass is still celebrated in French) and an affiliated elementary school. In the vicinity are several other restaurants, cafes, hotels and other French-related institutions along Bush Street and Claude Lane, another nearby alley. [2]
The cafes, hotels and restaurants of the area have a distinct joie de vivre befitting the neighborhood's heritage. Due to cold weather and lack of available locations, no other neighborhood in San Francisco has a comparable street dining scene. The lane is closed to vehicular traffic and filled for lunch and dinner with portable chairs, tables, umbrellas, and outdoor heaters. At night the lively street is lit with candles, Christmas lights strung overhead, and light spilling out from the restaurant interiors. Restaurants send attractive hostesses out into the street to lure potential diners. [4] Every year, the area is the site of a boisterous Bastille Day celebration, the nation's largest, and Bush Street is temporarily renamed Buisson. [5]
The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in the early 1850s, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches, a post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture. Due to a combination of factors, some more broad-based related to difficult circumstances for San Francisco itself, while other factors are more specific to this neighborhood, San Francisco's Chinatown faces a struggle for survival.
Japantown, also known as J-Town or historically as Japanese Town, is a neighborhood in the Western Addition district of San Francisco, California. Japantown comprises about six city blocks and is considered one of the largest and oldest ethnic enclaves in the United States.
Russian Hill is a neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It is named after one of San Francisco's 44 hills, and one of its original "Seven Hills".
Fisherman's Wharf is a neighborhood and popular tourist attraction in San Francisco, California, United States. It roughly encompasses the northern waterfront area of San Francisco from Ghirardelli Square or Van Ness Avenue east to Pier 35 or Kearny Street. The F Market streetcar runs through the area, the Powell-Hyde cable car line runs to Aquatic Park, at the edge of Fisherman's Wharf, and the Powell-Mason cable car line runs a few blocks away.
The Financial District is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, United States, that serves as its main central business district and had 372,829 jobs according to U.S. census tracts as of 2012-2016. It is home to the city's largest concentration of corporate headquarters, law firms, insurance companies, real estate firms, savings and loan banks, and other financial institutions. Multiple Fortune 500 companies headquartered in San Francisco have their offices in the Financial District, including Wells Fargo, Salesforce, Uber, Gap, and Williams-Sonoma.
The Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley, California, comprises two worker-owned-and-operated businesses: a cheese shop/bakery commonly referred to as "The Cheese Board" and a pizzeria known as "Cheese Board Pizza". Along with Peet's Coffee, the Cheese Board is known for its role in starting the North Shattuck neighborhood of Berkeley on its way to becoming famous as a culinary destination: the "Gourmet Ghetto". The bakery brought the French baguette into vogue for Berkeley consumers, and helped spark a revolution in artisan bread.
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Polk Street is a street in San Francisco, California, that travels northward from Market Street to Beach Street and is one of the main thoroughfares of the Polk Gulch neighborhood traversing through the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, and Russian Hill neighborhoods. The street takes its name from former U.S. President James K. Polk.
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La Peña Cultural Center, or La Peña for short, is a multicultural center in the United States. It was founded in 1975 by Latin American and Californian allies in Berkeley, California in response to the 1973 coup d'état in Chile, or golpe de estado. The center was a focal point for the opposition-in-exile to dictator Augusto Pinochet during his rule, and later evolved into a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote peace, social justice and community action through cultural arts, education and community action. La Peña is located at 3105 Shattuck Avenue in the Ashby neighborhood of South Berkeley, California.
Chinatowns are enclaves of Chinese people outside of China. The first Chinatown in the United States was San Francisco's Chinatown in 1848, and many other Chinatowns were established in the 19th century by the Chinese diaspora on the West Coast. By 1875, Chinatowns had emerged in eastern cities such as New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigration to the United States, but the Magnuson Act of 1943 repealed it, and the population of Chinatowns began to rise again. In the 2010s, the downturn in the U.S. economy caused many Chinese Americans to return to China.
Nob Hill is a neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States that is known for its numerous luxury hotels and historic mansions. Nob Hill has historically served as a center of San Francisco's upper class. Nob Hill is among the highest-income neighborhoods in the United States, as well as one of the most desirable and expensive real estate markets in the country. Prior to Covid-19, it was the most expensive real estate market per metre squared, narrowly beating Monte Carlo, although it has since fallen heavily. It was the only place in the United States so far where market price per square metre exceeded the average yearly salary in the country.
Manilatown was a Filipino American neighborhood in San Francisco, which thrived from the 1920s to late 1970s. The district encompassed a three block radius around Kearny and Jackson Streets, next to Chinatown. The neighborhood was known for the International Hotel, a single room occupancy (SRO) hotel where many of the residents lived. Manilatown was also home to many businesses that catered to the Filipino American community, such as Manila Cafe, New Luneta Cafe, Bataan Lunch, Casa Playa, Sampagita Restaurant, Blanco's Bar, Lucky M. Pool Hall, and Tino's Barber Shop. At its height, over 1000 residents lived in Manilatown, and it contained a total of 30,000 transient laborers. From the late 1960s-70s, the neighborhood was transformed by city initiatives that aimed to gentrify the area. By 1977, the neighborhood had been largely destroyed, and it became part of Chinatown.
37°47′29″N122°24′14″W / 37.79125°N 122.40376°W
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