South of Market: then & now

A neighborhood vanished, and transformed

Matt Graves
3 min readMar 31, 2014

Last month, I saw an intriguing Tweet from @robinsloan, pointing out a photo survey of San Francisco’s South of Market district in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

That Tweet led to a post —I think from the New Yorker— about the photos & their photographer, Janet Delaney, who moved to the South of Market neighborhood in 1978 and stayed through the mid-eighties, documenting the neighborhood, its residents, and its rapid transformation. Delaney’s photos were recently published in a gorgeous book, “South of Market”.

I’m fascinated with San Francisco’s history, and grew up in that era, so Delaney’s photos caught my attention. I found the images completely arresting; the buildings look familiar, but the landscape is alien.

Then, as now, San Francisco and its landscape were undergoing a significant shift, as the city claimed 87 acres of prime downtown land —covering six entire city blocks to the south of Market Street— in the name of urban renewal. This process displaced 4,000 residents, mainly elderly and low-income, the majority of whom lived in the area’s 46 residential hotels. In a matter of just a few years, an entire neighborhood was wiped away. Delaney’s photos capture this vanished San Francisco.

I thought it would be interesting to recreate some of Delaney’s pictures, to better understand how much has changed South of Market in the 36 years since construction commenced on the Moscone Center. So yesterday, armed with the captions for Delaney’s photos and a printed-out Google Map of the neighborhood, I spent a few hours doing just that. These are the results.

Mercantile Building, Mission & 3rd Streets (via JanetDelaney.com)
The Mercantile Building today, with the Yerba Buena Center in the background.
Saturday afternoon, Howard Street between 3rd & 4th Streets (via JanetDelaney.com)
Sunday afternoon, Howard Street between 3rd & 4th Streets
Office workers on lunch break near the site of the new convention center, 4th at Minna Street (Janet Delaney, via The New Yorker)
4th & Minna Street today, by the Moscone Center
Langton, between Folsom and Harrison (via JanetDelaney.com)
The same spot on Langton Street today. Less desolate, more colorful. Same pipe.
Across from the Moscone Center, 3rd at Tehama Street (via JanetDelaney.com)
3rd & Tehama Street today — the questionably-named “Moscone Center Garage Mall”.

Suggested reading on Janet Delaney’s “South of Market”:

The New Yorker

The Guardian

Mother Jones

FastCo Design

Suggested reading on the struggle over downtown development:

The Yerba Buena Center: Redevelopment and a Working Class Community’s Resistance,” by John Elrick (via the excellent FoundSF)

City for Sale: the Transformation of San Francisco”, by Chester Hartman

Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism”, by Rebecca Solnit

Why San Francisco Is (or Used to Be) Different: Progressive Activists and Neighborhoods Had a Big Impact”, by UC Santa Cruz professor G. William Domhoff

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Matt Graves

lover of loud music. laugher of loud laughs. ex-comms for @twitter, @vessel & @rhapsody. now, doing my own thing: tripleshot communications.