San Francisco Relocation Guide - Antevia

Crocker Galleria, the Embarcadero Center, the Ferry Building, and the Rincon Center
complex.
History
A statue on Market Street in the heart of the Financial District commemorates the United
States annexing San Francisco and California from Mexico during the Mexican American
war in 1848.
The area was the center of European and American settlement during Spanish and later
Mexican rule. Following American annexation and the Gold Rush, the area boomed
rapidly and the Bay shoreline, which originally ended at Battery St, was filled in and
extended to the Embarcadero. Gold Rush wealth and business made it the financial
capital of the west coast as many banks and businesses set up in the neighborhood. The
west coast's first and only skyscrapers, were built in the area along Market Street.
The neighborhood was completey destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake & Fire (although
miraculously, the area's skyscrapers survived), and rebuilt. Because of state wide height
restrictions due to earthquake fears, the district remained realtively low-rise throughout
the 20th century until the late 1950s, when due to new building and earthquake
retrofitting technologies, the height restrictions were lifted, fueling a skyscraper building
boom. This boom accelerated under mayor Diane Feinstein during the 1980s under her
plan of "Manhattanization". This caused widespread oppostion citywide leading to the
"skyscraper revolt" similar to the "freeway revolt" in the city years earlier. The
skyscraper revolt led to the city imposing extremeley strict, European style height
restrictions on building construction citywide.