I've always found this to be a fascinating and baffling piece of infrastructure. It's especially interesting to me that SF's freeway revolts were already in full swing by the early 1960s, as this was several years ahead of many other cities. Great telling of this story!
Other cities like Portland - were rebelling too. Harbor Drive freeway was horrible...destroyed most of the classical cast iron facade architecture of Portland. The locals had it removed...first in the nation to undo a Freeway I believe. Today, it's Waterfront Park. Portland still has "ghost ramps" - extremely frightening off ramps into dead space - that should have connected with freeways never built. Nothing keeps cars from plunging off them to their doom, except a couple flimsy, portable concrete barriers.
I visited the ferry building several years ago. I couldn't believe they had this concrete behemoth standing there for decades... Thanks for this extensive report!
@@StaYUTI420less homless I agree, but there were many other problems at that time, some of which weren't even discovered because nobody had a computer-camera at their pocket 24/7
@@StaYUTI420 I can’t speak as to whether the city was better or worse back then vs now but I’m happy they removed this ugly concrete structure! It’s also good that San Franciscans rejected all the other freeways that destroyed other cities.. the city is better because of it
The damage to the Embarcadero was the silver lining to the Loma Prieta Earthquake. I grew up in the area, and the arguments to repair them really changed once we had gone several months without driving on these freeways. Many realized that they were not a critically needed as thought before.
You think it would be nice now? I’m not sure how fast they really were compared to regular roads. You still have to get off at the exit and I’m sure that backed up a lot onto the freeway. Videos of people driving on it show them going maybe 45-50 tops. Lots of sharp turns.
The Loma Prieta earthquake wasn’t quite as horrible as it could have been thanks to the World Series baseball championship which saw the Oakland A’s playing the San Francisco Giants. Local excitement was high so people had left work early to either get to Candlestick Park for the game, or to get home to be able to watch it on television. Thus the traffic was substantially less than usual. This saved so many lives - not a claim that much in baseball can legitimately make a claim to be essential to life, but on that evening it most definitely was.
It also helped that Loma Prieta was only a 15 second main shock. The P wave. Not the 45 second plus main shock for a normal 6.9M earthquake. I know because I was counting. In a tilt up office building on Bay landfill. I was in a 7.1M about 20 years ago and the main shock lasted a good 50 seconds. If it had been the full 45 seconds shake the results would have been much more like Kyoto in 1995. Many raised sections of 80, 280 and 101 freeways would have come down. Just like the Cypress structure. Although the Cypress was mostly due to a botched seismic retrofit. So would the Marin side connector to the Golden Gate Bridge. Plus the San Rafael Bridge and San Mateo Bridge connectors would have probably been seriously damaged. A lot of mid rise buildings would have pancaked too. We had a whole bunch of very lucky breaks that evening. Not just with the World Series game.
In the past, I would have never been caught dead watching the game, but there I was watching it. Then the ground started rolling back and forth, and the TV screen went into disarray. The most frightening day of my life.
"The low income areas of Russian Hill and Pacific Heights." 😂 I grew up in SF in the 60's and watched those two areas grow to become some of the most expensive in the country. And that crazy fountain. My brother pushed me into it when we were younger.
For those of us from the South Bay in the 70s and 80s, the freeway the easiest route to the nightclubs we'd go to around Broadway. I can still remember speeding along late at night to the freeway exit and finding a place to park for us to go to the On Broadway club or Mabuhay Gardens in the same building down below. It was a terrible event that led to it's removal, but definitely made the city better. Much later, I commuted for 4 years over the ferry from Alameda to the Ferry Building and it was the most beautiful thing to glide across the bay and watch the city rise before me in the morning light. (Or morning fog, as the case often was.)
I used to go to shows at the Mab and Rock On Broadway, later just On Broadway, and then I ended up as the House Electrician at the current space user Broadway Studios. The band Train came through in 2012 and did a corporate sellout video for Clorox "Earth Friendly" cleaners which might be the last time the lit marquis sign was ever animated because the mechanical sequencer was on its last legs. I bailed when one of the owners told me the earthquake retrofit to the building would only prevent bricks from going outward and the building would probably collapse on itself, and the downstairs tenant had cut out structural supports because they didn't like how they looked.
I arrived in the SF Bay Area in late 1978 and was stationed on Yerba Buena Island while in the US Coast Guard. I frequently used both the Embarcadero Freeway and the Cypress Freeway. This video brought back so many memories of my younger days riding my motorcycle along the same depicted footage. I still live in the SF Bay Area and I can attest to how the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway was much needed and how that area enhances the charm, the beauty and the rich history of the waterfront.
It was definitely an eyesore and while it was up when I lived there I have to admit that I was happy that after the ‘89 quake it was torn down and the beauty came back. It looks so much better. I lived in the Bay Area from 1981-2022.
Very interesting presentation. I have walked its former route along the Embarcadero, but had no idea that a freeway once occupied that space. San Francisco would have been irrevocably changed if the plans for the entire system had come to fruition. Thank you for the video.
I don't see how it would not be an expensive liberal cesspool that it is now. A highway would have made it much easier for the avg. city resident to get places instead they have to spillover onto the grid, all for socialists tree hugging liberals to spout how "vibrant" that makes the city.
I've never seen the Embarcadero without the freeway. I lived there for a few years in the 80's, but the last time I was there was a few weeks before the earthquake. Same with Santa Cruz. Haven't seen it without the Pacific Garden Mall downtown.
While a double deck freeway is inappropriate along a waterfront, the next stage in urban clean-up is getting rid of bicycles - they're a menace and they're ugly in cities!
Living on Telegraph hill 480 was a God send, my parents used it everyday to get in and out of North Beach, once I started driving it was my way in and out of the city.
I worked in mountain view for a few weeks in 1992. With colleagues we visited the wharf area where the Embarcadero used to run and it was already difficult to believe they'd ever let that monstrosity dominate the area.
San Francisco used to be an industrial and working class city. Hard to believe, but yeah, I can remember growing up, there was way more industry. I can remember walking along warehouses and old railroad tracks, used to be able to see the power plant blowing off smoke on any given morning when it was cold out, that one is gone too now.
Fancy seeing you here! The United States has a lot of sections of motorway that have been torn out like this. It is always hard to imagine that they were ever once motorways.
Yeah it is hard to believe they let the neoliberals destroy the city by gentrifying it for the upper classes. SF would be a better city with the highway there, not because the yuppie park is not cute but because the highway is for everyone, not just yuppies and elitists to toot their horn about.
It was unusually hot the day of the earthquake, in the 80's thanks to El Niño. I was crossing Howard Street, south of Market for an after-work snack and as I looked down the street for oncoming cars, the asphalt began rippling in waves a few inches high all the way down the street. Brick building were smacking together, shooting out dust between them
@@thentheresmaude23 It was wild to see cars in the parking lot moved slightly out of thier parking spots when I left work. Crazy times, I was in Foster City.
@@thentheresmaude23 I got a ride in the back of a pickup with 15 others to get to the GG Bridge and slowly crawled through the Marina and watched the crooked houses burn. Did you have damage up on the hill?
Well done. For those curious, you can watch a documentary on here about the construction of the Cypress Street Viaduct, the section of what later became Interstate 880 that collapsed catastrophically in the Loma Prieta earthquake. Built before the effects of liquefaction were understood, you can see in the film where the ground around the pilings fills with water as the piles are driven in. It's hard to imagine a time when property blocks from San Francisco Bay with views of the waterfront would be considered essentially worthless.
I really love living a few blocks off The Embarcadero. I’m fortunate to walk through the ferry building as part of my daily walk with my dog. It’s beautiful. I don’t take any of it for granted. I ❤SF Great video. (edited for spelling.)
Excellent. I went to SF in Oct 1994 and was completely unaware of what had been at the Embarcadero not long before. Being young and silly I had done zero research but just knew I had to get to SF before another big one!
I moved to SF in 1984 and the remnant ramps to the central freeway were still there after the 89 quake. You can still see the gaps in the buildings in neighborhoods where the ramps once stood. Now those ramps are all gone. Good.
I moved to San Francisco as a child in 1993. It was years until I heard about the Embarcadero Freeway and it still boggles my mind that it stood for so long.
Go ahead, Rory. Make my day... lol This was sooo well researched and explained! Fantastic!!! I worked in 4 different office towers adjacent to Justin Herman Plaza between 1983 and 2001. I was in Three Embarcadero Center unjamming a photocopy machine after work, at the bequest of a rather attractive and shapely co-worker, when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. Before the power and lights went out all I remember is being stunned by her bust suddenly and inexplicably swaying to and fro... Some things can never be unseen, lol. True! And I vividly recall, and was deeply annoyed by, the opposition the Chinatown merchants mounted in the effort to retain that unspeakable, and mostly useless, eyesore. Now if Lower Manhattan could just find a way to get rid of the South Street viaduct in front of Pier 11. Not nearly so simple...😕
I guess you will have to hope for bad maintenance of that South street viaduct for long enough for it to be prohibitively expensive to renovate it to a safe state. Then it might be gotten rid of if a better solution can be thought up. I guess any politician who proposes and executes an equal solution to a situation that enhances the æsthetics of any city will be fondly remembered (at least for that act).
This is great! I knew a little bit about the Embarcadero freeway and former plans, but I still learned a bunch here. I grew up in San Francisco in the 80s and my family drove into Chinatown every weekend via the Embarcadero freeway, so this piece of SF history is really meaningful to me.
It’s always good to hear of the removal of an urban freeway. It’s proof that the mistakes of the past are not permanent and we can still correct them and make the world a better place
Very interesting thank you. Road building in the mid 20th century spoiled quite a few historical cities. Carlisle in the UK springs to mind, but I'm sure there are others
My dad was working in SF when Loma Prieta hit, and drove the Embarcadero to get home, being the only car on it at the time. It's probably a pretty dubious honor, especially in retrospect, but he like so many of his time bought in on the car-brained life, as the orchards of the lower bay rapidly turned into housing during his early adulthood. I'm very glad the paradigm has moved back towards a public transit focus, and I blew his mind by telling him that high-speed electic trains are going to run where he once saw Daylights as a kid.
I think San Francisco would have become another Detroit had they built all those freeways. Imagine Russian Hill and Pacific Heights as slum neighborhoods!
@@michaelbruvolt4221 Don't be so sure ... they are moving forward with construction in some areas and the focus on public transit means they (government) won't let it go.
Very good report, I learned a lot. My parents transported us over the Embarcadero quite a bit during the 60s/70s. I drove it often in my 20s in the 80s, and watched it torn down after the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989. I am old now, an appreciate the historical context and rational. I didn't know there were "low income areas of Russian Hill and Pacific Heights". BTW, I was on the Bay Bridge when it collapsed.
@@modembuddy I was heading East and was emerging from the tunnel when the earthquake hit. It felt like having flat tires. Everybody pulled over and was checking their tires. We got back into our cars, and proceed East. We all came to a halt. I see hundreds of people running West toward us. I get out of my car ask, "What is happening?. A breathless young man told me the bridge is collapsing. I said to myself, this a soundly engineered structure. This is where you mind plays tricks on you. I imagined myself falling into the bay, and somehow thought that was survivable. I then imagined my car following me down into the bay, and I though, well, that is not survivable. So I took off running, Regimental tie, white shirt, blue pin stripe suit and wing tips. I came to a car, and a guy emerged: What is happening?. I said, "somebody told me the bridge is collapsing, but I have not observed this myself". However, I am leaving now, have a nice day. And I took for running toward Yerba Buena Island. I was the 2 person to make it there. I called my girl friend from the pay phone. Eventually, Cal Trans and CHP came on to the Bridge, and turned us all around and we drove back into San Francisco. I headed north and did not find any light/gasoline until San Rafael. I made it back to Oakland by 11:00 pm Earthquake was at 5:04 pm. I now carry 3 day survival kits in both my cars, and about 2 months of food/water at home. I also did my seismic retrofit on my Oakland Housel. The End.
This freeway brings back nostalgia. As young child I can remember riding in the backseat of my parents Plymouth Volare wagon and my Dad taking this exit to drop off my Mom for work. My mom was a nurse and worked the graveyard shift at the Chinese Hospital in Chinatown. When the Embarcadero freeway was demolished, I was young then and didn’t understand the mixed emotions that left the city divided. However it took over 30years to build a transit system and reconnect Chinatown to the City thanks to Rose Pak. 🕊️
Great video. The first time I ever heard about the Embarcadero Freeway was from reading The Man in the High Castle. The freeway was long gone by the time I read that book. It's really surprising how it was even started with all the hatred for it.
Similar story to Marseille ports where a similar overpass divided the waterfront for years. Eventually demolished in the late 2010s and replaced with a tunnel. The surface area immediately revived with the trams, shopping and amazing views. No more crime in this area as well.
Bittersweet for me. The Embarcadero made it so easy to drive straight into Chinatown as a kid. After it was gone, yeah, it opened up the skyline but now it is a pain in the butt to get to Chinatown or North Beach.
Nice presentation. Reminds me of the old elevated highways in Boston before they put them all in tunnels. That video would take forever to breakdown. Keep up the good work.
Thank You! i had never really thought about the gigantic role the Ferry Terminal played as the transportation nexus of the bay. i remember the Embarcadero Freeway. Good Riddance !:-) 💜🙏⚡
Those are some extremely rare views of the ramps along Folsom street, thank you! I wish I could find more images of the freeway's various on-ramps and off-ramps, but they are quite difficult to find. One small correction: the Central Freeway was truncated back to the Fell and Oak ramps in 1992. The Oak Street on-ramp wouldn't be removed until 1996, followed by the Fell Street off-ramp in 2003. There was a strong push to rebuild those two ramps as a wider parallel structure rather than double-decked as before, but it was defeated by the Octavia Boulevard proposal. Also, the remnant seen at 16:20 predates the Embarcadero Freeway-it's the elevated bus ramp that led to the original Transbay Terminal, built in the '30s, and doubled as the original Fremont Street off-ramp from the Bay Bridge into downtown before the Embarcadero Freeway provided more options (it was returned to its original use after the freeway was demolished, then rebuilt later on with the same function when the bus ramps had to be rebuilt for the new terminal).
As an American, I appreciate that you covered this structure in a more critical manner, as you did for the entire project of destroying cities to build highways. Many Americans just accept this system as normal, and I hope that any others watching this video will understand the damaging effects of this style of city design.
@@ragazzi25 Louisville: had a nice Ohio riverfront. Then someone decided an expressway would be more appropriate. Maybe one of their city planners could take a field trip to Seattle and see how the Alaskan Highway went away. Chicago...more of the same but on steroids. The entire effing lakefront. ~ 15 miles. Happily, MOST of what is east of the drive is green, but not all of it.
Funny how I accepted this eyesore forever and felt a little sad when the earthquake caused to be removed. Now I can't imagine this freeway ever being there - the beauty and openess of the ferry building and wharf area are a true treasure of the San Francisco experience.
San Francisco got rid of a giant concrete eyesore. Now if SF can get rid of syringes, needles and feces on the streets it might become a place worth visiting or living in again!
I am not aware of traffic congestion in downtown San Francisco, and I also admire pedestrian friendly boulevards but in large cities with millions of people, a grade separate right of way, whether it is for pedestrian, railway or motor vehicles, is something required despite of the downsides it has. Like I said, I also admire pedestrian friendly streets on ground level and this is why I think Boston's Big Dig was a prime example of how we should handle the ugly decay of viaducts spread out nationwide. I know it comes at a great price, but nothing comes easy after building a huge vein of traffic in urban areas. It would have been better if nothing was built there in the first place, but once these gigantic veins are built, a replacement should follow. Rose Pak indeed did have her point.
I used to take the Embarcadero Freeway to get to my office. It saved me several minutes per day. I’m actually glad they took it down because it really was an eyesore.
I love going to SFO for work... and stay in that area and go to the fary building and all the shops and everything around there. I could not imagine that being a big freeway!!! The current route and art work and views are awesome... so glad they didn't rebuild the freeway. it looks so much nicer and SFO is such a nice city to walk in, even in the summer, that its best to walk or take the BART to get around.
I used to drive on that freeway. It was the fastest way to get from the Bay Bridge to down town and North Beach. Traffic turned to gridlock after they tore it down.
I hear the arguments about the freeway ruining the view all the time. For me it was just the opposite. The best view was while driving along that freeway, or better yet as a passenger. It was definitely scary underneath it though, so that aspect was definitely improved. However, nowadays all of San Francisco is scary and I'm not being facetious.
I don’t remember the Embarcadero freeway since I didn’t spend any time in SF at that time. I only know the beautiful walk from the Ferry Building to Oracle Park. But I definitely remember the 880 freeway in the east bay that collapsed in the earthquake. My mom and I used to drive along that freeway to San Jose every month in the ‘80s. That evening, I had parked myself in front of our TV, waiting for the World Series to begin. That was one weekend I had insisted to my mom that we stay home and watch the series.
I remember only a little bit about this freeway. My dad was a newspaper driver, so he drove it often. A portion on 280 in the city was also closed after the earthquake for a long time, but they refurbished that and now it's the best way to get to the Embarcadero from the Peninsula, ending at 3rd St near the baseball stadium.
I was on a TDY out to SF last year and its funny, the routes that you document are actually sometimes how the GPS will route you, almost as if it is trying to take the old planned route. Great video as always and thank you for the history and research
Thank you very much! That was really interesting. Possibly post-war construction activities - particularly for car traffic - has destroyed more of cities and towns in Germany than than the damage caused by war, eg arial bombings etc.
It destoys the social fabric of cities. I am glad that in the netherlands reason kicked in again relativly early and a lot of cities have been spared this mindless destruction. Not all where so lucky though, like rotterdam, but a lot where.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 true. One smart thing that Italy did is to keep freeways outside of city limits. Almost every Italian city I can think of is designed this way. Don't know why in USA, they blast multiple freeways through downtown areas, very strange.
@@stevens1041 in the netherlands they didn't put the highways trough the cities either, but still crossed the city with 4 lanes of asphalt all trough the city and made them troughways. Not sure what they are called in english. Pretty much what you see in the usa as well. And it was supposed to be like that everywhere but it was stopped relativly early on. What did happen was generally changing everything to provide for cars everywhere, parking everywhere. Surrounded by trafic all the time, if you wanted to go anywhere you basicly had to be stuck in trafic because everyone had to drive everywhere. But this has been reversing since the 90s luckilly. Slowly pushing out cars more and more from where people have to live and designing things that you no longer need a car to do most daily things. Cities don't need to be paved grey hellholes. They are just made to be like that.
Great video as always. Also Seattle had a very similar multi story freeway by the waterfront called the Alaska Way Viaduct, it was torn down a few years ago due to Earthquake risks of the old structure and it was replaced by an underground tunnel which turned in to a bit of a mess when the tunnel boring machine broke down underground but it was completed and it opened up the waterfront view which his nice. The issue with San Francisco is that it sits right on the 101 freeway so anyone going North-South is forced on to the surface streets of SF even if they do not plan to stop in the city, this can be people form WA, OR, Northern CA, Napa Valley and all the many cities along the coast to get down to LA. and back
You do know there’s planes going from Oregon to Los Angeles, San Diego, etc.? People moving willingly by car N-S can use any other route east of the bay, which is better for SF and better for the motorists.
@@pjotrtje0NL Nothing to do with flying you have local people commuting all around the Bay Area from Sanoma, napa and all the other cities down to San Jose it's all just one big busy area and people have to cross SF to get to the other side on the 101. When I drive down from Seattle I am on vacation, we stop at friends in other cities and i usually have with me 2 or 3 other people and many items, last time I had with me a trailer and a sofa I refinished for them. Just a hobby. I sometimes drive down on 101 and back up north on I5 or the other way around. In winter i5 mountain passes can be a problem this winter I had to wait for the road to open due to heavy snow it's also difficult drive, very steep and many curves like at Lakehead and other parts of the road but in summer its all good, also I sometimes take 97 or 395 but that is to combine travel and vacation in to one.
Excellent historical content, I grew up in San Jose while the Embarcadero Freeway was in place, and always wondered about the story behind the iconic and now fully-visible clock tower. Thanks for the education!
I used to drive on the elevated Embarcadero every day, from 1980 to 1984. (I still remember the wonderful small of roasting coffee coming from the Folgers coffee plant-long since converted to other uses-beneath the freeway.) It was an amazing transportation artery and an urban abomination. The elevated roadway cast a perpetual shadow and physically isolated the shore from the rest of the city. The area was like a ghost town. Tearing it down was the first step in a glorious transformation into one of the most amazing urban waterfront settings in America. It’s filled with strollers, runners, cyclists, and shoppers enjoying sunshine and amazing vistas every day.
What I've always found fascinating is all the areas that had ramps and connectors are still visible as voids or empty lots with weird elevations or strangely curved buildings and surface streets. There's a lot of that too in West Oakland with the old train spur easements and warehouses. And even farther into the East Bay if you follow the light rail lines. All cities are built on the bones of the previous. If you want a fun wormhole look up google earth for wherever You live and then compare it to historic maps. I am not responsible for the lost days you will find when you come out of that trip.
@ 2:00 : HUGE glaring mistake re: the ferry terminal clock tower..... the subtitles AND narration both state it is 45 foot tall , but it is of course 245 foot tall (75m).
First drove on the Embarcadero Freeway in 1972. Parents just moved to Orinda and my father's office was in the Ferry Building. To leave I would drive down Embarcadero to Broadway and then onto the freeway. I moved up from San Diego in 1977 for grad school and was on the road hundreds of time. In 1983 I moved from the East Bay to the Richmond District and used the Central Freeway daily until Loma Prieta. Moved out of The City in 1998 to the East Bay where my office was. Will say The City sure was a great place to live in the 70-90's and no doubt in the 50-60's. Not so much now as the middle class has pretty much left.
The Embarcadero freeway when opened in 1959 did not go in front of "the iconic Hyatt Rengency" since that structure wasn't built until 1973. Driving on the Embarcadero Freeway was quite fun, but I am glad it was removed.
I lived in San Francisco for a few years in college, back in 2005-08, and I'm glad all of that was torn down. It's such a lovely view along the Embarcadero, I can't imagine having that big, ugly, concrete monstrosity running through there.
Good video on the history of the clash between protestor and the highway planning committee regarding the building of freeways in the city of San Francisco.
12:12 Procol Harum and Pink Floyd at the Fillmore! How did I miss that concert? At the time I only lived 25 miles across the Bay from San Francisco. Oh, wait a minute. I was 6 years old. That explains why I missed it.
Thanks for this. It really shows the displacement of folks in early 1900s from destructive freeway "innovation", at the time. Moreover, shows issues of traffic issues in mid to late 1900s as well
I was on the Embarcadero during the 89 earthquake. I drove the Embarcadero every day for years. It became almost impossible to get from one of the City to the other after it was torn down. Took hours, a real nightmare. Instead of getting off work at 3 PM it was 6 PM. I hated losing it. Glad I left there.
Many wild parrots live in the city. There were trees that grew next to the highway where parrots would hang out. It was great seeing them on the way to work
This whole time had no idea the Embarcadero freeway existed. It would’ve been so nice if they kept it for it to connect between the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate because now you have to go through the whole downtown area.
I’ve always lived in Marin County (pronounced Ma-RIN, not MAR-in), just north of the Golden Gate Bridge and spent my whole career commuting to San Francisco’s Financial District. I usually took the bus, but sometimes the ferry, instead, which took longer. The Embarcadero Freeway was hated by everyone. I was just in North Beach, on my homebound commute, when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake hit. When I later returned to my office, the flagpole on the Ferry Building was bent over and stayed that way for years to come. The Embarcadero Freeway was shored up by huge stacks of 12 x 12 lumber at the crossing to the Ferry Building. We were all thrilled when the hated Embarcadero Freeway was finally demolished. The Embarcadero (Street) was refurbished afterward and looks so much better. I just wish they had installed native redwoods along the center of this street instead of the alien palm trees they did. Some tropical plants can live here, but that doesn’t mean that they should. It now looks like Santa Barbara.
I mean...seems like it must've looked like a blight from pretty much any vantage from inside the city. But it must've been really fun to drive. Especially for tourists.
Removing the Embarcadero fwy was the best thing that happened to San Francisco at that time. Most of the thru traffic that was headed north to Marin County was routed along Van Ness. This route was always busy, night and day. I felt sorry for the folk living along Van Ness.
![Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) [ST05]](/img/n.gif)
I've always found this to be a fascinating and baffling piece of infrastructure. It's especially interesting to me that SF's freeway revolts were already in full swing by the early 1960s, as this was several years ahead of many other cities. Great telling of this story!
Other cities like Portland - were rebelling too. Harbor Drive freeway was horrible...destroyed most of the classical cast iron facade architecture of Portland. The locals had it removed...first in the nation to undo a Freeway I believe. Today, it's Waterfront Park.
Portland still has "ghost ramps" - extremely frightening off ramps into dead space - that should have connected with freeways never built. Nothing keeps cars from plunging off them to their doom, except a couple flimsy, portable concrete barriers.
I’m a huge fan of your channel!
Thank you very kindly, I love your videos! You present some fantastic stories from the West Coast! :D
@@rorymacve Thanks very much, likewise!
Actually it isn’t a great telling. Much of the information is simply incorrect.
I visited the ferry building several years ago. I couldn't believe they had this concrete behemoth standing there for decades... Thanks for this extensive report!
Richmond (Virginia) Main Street Station is right next to I-95 viaduct, you may check Google Map and streetview to see how devastative it is
City was better then tho.
@@StaYUTI420less homless I agree, but there were many other problems at that time, some of which weren't even discovered because nobody had a computer-camera at their pocket 24/7
@@HbCAMM_CT So SF has always loved it's houseless neighbors.
@@StaYUTI420 I can’t speak as to whether the city was better or worse back then vs now but I’m happy they removed this ugly concrete structure! It’s also good that San Franciscans rejected all the other freeways that destroyed other cities.. the city is better because of it
The damage to the Embarcadero was the silver lining to the Loma Prieta Earthquake. I grew up in the area, and the arguments to repair them really changed once we had gone several months without driving on these freeways. Many realized that they were not a critically needed as thought before.
You think it would be nice now? I’m not sure how fast they really were compared to regular roads. You still have to get off at the exit and I’m sure that backed up a lot onto the freeway. Videos of people driving on it show them going maybe 45-50 tops. Lots of sharp turns.
I vehemently disagree ‼️🙄🤦🏻♂️Peoplewere forced to change , which is always wrong‼️
The Loma Prieta earthquake wasn’t quite as horrible as it could have been thanks to the World Series baseball championship which saw the Oakland A’s playing the San Francisco Giants. Local excitement was high so people had left work early to either get to Candlestick Park for the game, or to get home to be able to watch it on television. Thus the traffic was substantially less than usual. This saved so many lives - not a claim that much in baseball can legitimately make a claim to be essential to life, but on that evening it most definitely was.
Truth!!
It also helped that Loma Prieta was only a 15 second main shock. The P wave. Not the 45 second plus main shock for a normal 6.9M earthquake. I know because I was counting. In a tilt up office building on Bay landfill. I was in a 7.1M about 20 years ago and the main shock lasted a good 50 seconds.
If it had been the full 45 seconds shake the results would have been much more like Kyoto in 1995. Many raised sections of 80, 280 and 101 freeways would have come down. Just like the Cypress structure. Although the Cypress was mostly due to a botched seismic retrofit. So would the Marin side connector to the Golden Gate Bridge. Plus the San Rafael Bridge and San Mateo Bridge connectors would have probably been seriously damaged. A lot of mid rise buildings would have pancaked too.
We had a whole bunch of very lucky breaks that evening. Not just with the World Series game.
You're right. If it was something like the Dodgers playing the Yankees, few would have rushed home to watch the game.
@@kbezier7484Close enough... But Kobe was mostly hit by the quake in '95, and not Kyoto (nor Osaka, although it felt as well in those areas).
In the past, I would have never been caught dead watching the game, but there I was watching it. Then the ground started rolling back and forth, and the TV screen went into disarray. The most frightening day of my life.
"The low income areas of Russian Hill and Pacific Heights." 😂 I grew up in SF in the 60's and watched those two areas grow to become some of the most expensive in the country. And that crazy fountain. My brother pushed me into it when we were younger.
the water looks like toxic waste now.
For those of us from the South Bay in the 70s and 80s, the freeway the easiest route to the nightclubs we'd go to around Broadway. I can still remember speeding along late at night to the freeway exit and finding a place to park for us to go to the On Broadway club or Mabuhay Gardens in the same building down below. It was a terrible event that led to it's removal, but definitely made the city better. Much later, I commuted for 4 years over the ferry from Alameda to the Ferry Building and it was the most beautiful thing to glide across the bay and watch the city rise before me in the morning light. (Or morning fog, as the case often was.)
I used to go to shows at the Mab and Rock On Broadway, later just On Broadway, and then I ended up as the House Electrician at the current space user Broadway Studios. The band Train came through in 2012 and did a corporate sellout video for Clorox "Earth Friendly" cleaners which might be the last time the lit marquis sign was ever animated because the mechanical sequencer was on its last legs. I bailed when one of the owners told me the earthquake retrofit to the building would only prevent bricks from going outward and the building would probably collapse on itself, and the downstairs tenant had cut out structural supports because they didn't like how they looked.
The Palladium
I arrived in the SF Bay Area in late 1978 and was stationed on Yerba Buena Island while in the US Coast Guard. I frequently used both the Embarcadero Freeway and the Cypress Freeway.
This video brought back so many memories of my younger days riding my motorcycle along the same depicted footage.
I still live in the SF Bay Area and I can attest to how the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway was much needed and how that area enhances the charm, the beauty and the rich history of the waterfront.
It was definitely an eyesore and while it was up when I lived there I have to admit that I was happy that after the ‘89 quake it was torn down and the beauty came back. It looks so much better. I lived in the Bay Area from 1981-2022.
Very interesting presentation. I have walked its former route along the Embarcadero, but had no idea that a freeway once occupied that space. San Francisco would have been irrevocably changed if the plans for the entire system had come to fruition. Thank you for the video.
I don't see how it would not be an expensive liberal cesspool that it is now. A highway would have made it much easier for the avg. city resident to get places instead they have to spillover onto the grid, all for socialists tree hugging liberals to spout how "vibrant" that makes the city.
I bike down the Embarcadero several times per week. Crazy to imagine it as a double story freeway.
I've never seen the Embarcadero without the freeway. I lived there for a few years in the 80's, but the last time I was there was a few weeks before the earthquake. Same with Santa Cruz. Haven't seen it without the Pacific Garden Mall downtown.
While a double deck freeway is inappropriate along a waterfront, the next stage in urban clean-up is getting rid of bicycles - they're a menace and they're ugly in cities!
I know a lot people hated it but it sure made getting to downtown a lot easier. Now it’s just a congested pain in the neck.
Living on Telegraph hill 480 was a God send, my parents used it everyday to get in and out of North Beach, once I started driving it was my way in and out of the city.
I worked in mountain view for a few weeks in 1992. With colleagues we visited the wharf area where the Embarcadero used to run and it was already difficult to believe they'd ever let that monstrosity dominate the area.
San Francisco used to be an industrial and working class city. Hard to believe, but yeah, I can remember growing up, there was way more industry. I can remember walking along warehouses and old railroad tracks, used to be able to see the power plant blowing off smoke on any given morning when it was cold out, that one is gone too now.
Fancy seeing you here! The United States has a lot of sections of motorway that have been torn out like this. It is always hard to imagine that they were ever once motorways.
Yeah it is hard to believe they let the neoliberals destroy the city by gentrifying it for the upper classes. SF would be a better city with the highway there, not because the yuppie park is not cute but because the highway is for everyone, not just yuppies and elitists to toot their horn about.
@@Great-Documentaries Your comment is a little incoherent
It was unusually hot the day of the earthquake, in the 80's thanks to El Niño. I was crossing Howard Street, south of Market for an after-work snack and as I looked down the street for oncoming cars, the asphalt began rippling in waves a few inches high all the way down the street. Brick building were smacking together, shooting out dust between them
I was stuck in a walk-in refridgerator ankle deep in mustard.
@@thegreenpickel that is a lot of mustard
I was in Nob Hill tuning into the world series! We walked down to the Marina the following AM.
@@thentheresmaude23 It was wild to see cars in the parking lot moved slightly out of thier parking spots when I left work. Crazy times, I was in Foster City.
@@thentheresmaude23 I got a ride in the back of a pickup with 15 others to get to the GG Bridge and slowly crawled through the Marina and watched the crooked houses burn. Did you have damage up on the hill?
Well done. For those curious, you can watch a documentary on here about the construction of the Cypress Street Viaduct, the section of what later became Interstate 880 that collapsed catastrophically in the Loma Prieta earthquake. Built before the effects of liquefaction were understood, you can see in the film where the ground around the pilings fills with water as the piles are driven in.
It's hard to imagine a time when property blocks from San Francisco Bay with views of the waterfront would be considered essentially worthless.
This is extremely comprehensive. Like better knowledge than most locals.
Didn't expect a Places - Lost in Time, but I can't wait to watch it!
Thanks! Now I know it's the Embarcadero Freeway that features in a segment of the amazing 1982 documentary movie Koyaanisqatsi.
I really love living a few blocks off The Embarcadero. I’m fortunate to walk through the ferry building as part of my daily walk with my dog. It’s beautiful. I don’t take any of it for granted. I ❤SF
Great video.
(edited for spelling.)
Excellent. I went to SF in Oct 1994 and was completely unaware of what had been at the Embarcadero not long before. Being young and silly I had done zero research but just knew I had to get to SF before another big one!
Reminds me of the debate about the tearing down of the Seattle viaduct a few years back.
I moved to SF in 1984 and the remnant ramps to the central freeway were still there after the 89 quake. You can still see the gaps in the buildings in neighborhoods where the ramps once stood.
Now those ramps are all gone.
Good.
I moved to San Francisco as a child in 1993. It was years until I heard about the Embarcadero Freeway and it still boggles my mind that it stood for so long.
Go ahead, Rory. Make my day... lol This was sooo well researched and explained! Fantastic!!! I worked in 4 different office towers adjacent to Justin Herman Plaza between 1983 and 2001. I was in Three Embarcadero Center unjamming a photocopy machine after work, at the bequest of a rather attractive and shapely co-worker, when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. Before the power and lights went out all I remember is being stunned by her bust suddenly and inexplicably swaying to and fro... Some things can never be unseen, lol. True! And I vividly recall, and was deeply annoyed by, the opposition the Chinatown merchants mounted in the effort to retain that unspeakable, and mostly useless, eyesore. Now if Lower Manhattan could just find a way to get rid of the South Street viaduct in front of Pier 11. Not nearly so simple...😕
I guess you will have to hope for bad maintenance of that South street viaduct for long enough for it to be prohibitively expensive to renovate it to a safe state. Then it might be gotten rid of if a better solution can be thought up.
I guess any politician who proposes and executes an equal solution to a situation that enhances the æsthetics of any city will be fondly remembered (at least for that act).
The story of Rose Pak and how she got her name on the Chinatown MUNI subway station is a very interesting one!
This is great! I knew a little bit about the Embarcadero freeway and former plans, but I still learned a bunch here. I grew up in San Francisco in the 80s and my family drove into Chinatown every weekend via the Embarcadero freeway, so this piece of SF history is really meaningful to me.
It’s always good to hear of the removal of an urban freeway. It’s proof that the mistakes of the past are not permanent and we can still correct them and make the world a better place
still billions were wasted.
I had the exact thought.
a better with homeless and drug addicts now 2024, bring back the freeway
Very interesting thank you. Road building in the mid 20th century spoiled quite a few historical cities. Carlisle in the UK springs to mind, but I'm sure there are others
My dad was working in SF when Loma Prieta hit, and drove the Embarcadero to get home, being the only car on it at the time. It's probably a pretty dubious honor, especially in retrospect, but he like so many of his time bought in on the car-brained life, as the orchards of the lower bay rapidly turned into housing during his early adulthood. I'm very glad the paradigm has moved back towards a public transit focus, and I blew his mind by telling him that high-speed electic trains are going to run where he once saw Daylights as a kid.
Can’t imagine the damage the freeways would have done to SF had they all been completed…
I think San Francisco would have become another Detroit had they built all those freeways. Imagine Russian Hill and Pacific Heights as slum neighborhoods!
Those high-speed electric trains aren't happening either
@@edwardmiessner6502
Um ... that is currently what is happening now ... SF is becoming like Detroit due to economic and crime issues.
@@michaelbruvolt4221
Don't be so sure ... they are moving forward with construction in some areas and the focus on public transit means they (government) won't let it go.
Very good report, I learned a lot. My parents transported us over the Embarcadero quite a bit during the 60s/70s. I drove it often in my 20s in the 80s, and watched it torn down after the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989. I am old now, an appreciate the historical context and rational. I didn't know there were "low income areas of Russian Hill and Pacific Heights". BTW, I was on the Bay Bridge when it collapsed.
You can't just drop that last part without any more details! What was it like when it collapsed? Did you feel the actual quake?
@@modembuddy I was heading East and was emerging from the tunnel when the earthquake hit. It felt like having flat tires. Everybody pulled over and was checking their tires.
We got back into our cars, and proceed East. We all came to a halt. I see hundreds of people running West toward us. I get out of my car ask, "What is happening?. A breathless young man told me the bridge is collapsing. I said to myself, this a soundly engineered structure. This is where you mind plays tricks on you. I imagined myself falling into the bay, and somehow thought that was survivable. I then imagined my car following me down into the bay, and I though, well, that is not survivable. So I took off running, Regimental tie, white shirt, blue pin stripe suit and wing tips. I came to a car, and a guy emerged: What is happening?. I said, "somebody told me the bridge is collapsing, but I have not observed this myself". However, I am leaving now, have a nice day. And I took for running toward Yerba Buena Island. I was the 2 person to make it there. I called my girl friend from the pay phone. Eventually, Cal Trans and CHP came on to the Bridge, and turned us all around and we drove back into San Francisco. I headed north and did not find any light/gasoline until San Rafael. I made it back to Oakland by 11:00 pm Earthquake was at 5:04 pm. I now carry 3 day survival kits in both my cars, and about 2 months of food/water at home. I also did my seismic retrofit on my Oakland Housel. The End.
This freeway brings back nostalgia. As young child I can remember riding in the backseat of my parents Plymouth Volare wagon and my Dad taking this exit to drop off my Mom for work. My mom was a nurse and worked the graveyard shift at the Chinese Hospital in Chinatown. When the Embarcadero freeway was demolished, I was young then and didn’t understand the mixed emotions that left the city divided. However it took over 30years to build a transit system and reconnect Chinatown to the City thanks to Rose Pak. 🕊️
Great video. The first time I ever heard about the Embarcadero Freeway was from reading The Man in the High Castle. The freeway was long gone by the time I read that book. It's really surprising how it was even started with all the hatred for it.
Similar story to Marseille ports where a similar overpass divided the waterfront for years. Eventually demolished in the late 2010s and replaced with a tunnel. The surface area immediately revived with the trams, shopping and amazing views. No more crime in this area as well.
Bittersweet for me. The Embarcadero made it so easy to drive straight into Chinatown as a kid. After it was gone, yeah, it opened up the skyline but now it is a pain in the butt to get to Chinatown or North Beach.
Nice presentation. Reminds me of the old elevated highways in Boston before they put them all in tunnels. That video would take forever to breakdown. Keep up the good work.
Thank You! i had never really thought about the gigantic role the Ferry Terminal played as the transportation nexus of the bay. i remember the Embarcadero Freeway. Good Riddance !:-) 💜🙏⚡
The ferry is actually a very wasteful way to move people from one part of the Bay to another. But it’s fun to travel on.
@@Markle2k True, on both points. I can't help but love the ferry service to Giants games. It's just fun.
Those are some extremely rare views of the ramps along Folsom street, thank you! I wish I could find more images of the freeway's various on-ramps and off-ramps, but they are quite difficult to find.
One small correction: the Central Freeway was truncated back to the Fell and Oak ramps in 1992. The Oak Street on-ramp wouldn't be removed until 1996, followed by the Fell Street off-ramp in 2003. There was a strong push to rebuild those two ramps as a wider parallel structure rather than double-decked as before, but it was defeated by the Octavia Boulevard proposal.
Also, the remnant seen at 16:20 predates the Embarcadero Freeway-it's the elevated bus ramp that led to the original Transbay Terminal, built in the '30s, and doubled as the original Fremont Street off-ramp from the Bay Bridge into downtown before the Embarcadero Freeway provided more options (it was returned to its original use after the freeway was demolished, then rebuilt later on with the same function when the bus ramps had to be rebuilt for the new terminal).
Well done video! We lived in SF and the peninsula in those days and used these roads on a regular basis.
I’m glad people are interested in the history
As an American, I appreciate that you covered this structure in a more critical manner, as you did for the entire project of destroying cities to build highways. Many Americans just accept this system as normal, and I hope that any others watching this video will understand the damaging effects of this style of city design.
Hard to believe how they approved the building of that freeway right on the waterfront...Absolute monstrosity!!!
Have you ever been to Chicago or Louisville?
@@kevinchilders2228 have not, why?
A *ton* of people will value jobs, the economy, transportation, convenience, and emergency response over aesthetics.
Who knew?
@@ragazzi25 Louisville: had a nice Ohio riverfront. Then someone decided an expressway would be more appropriate. Maybe one of their city planners could take a field trip to Seattle and see how the Alaskan Highway went away. Chicago...more of the same but on steroids. The entire effing lakefront. ~ 15 miles. Happily, MOST of what is east of the drive is green, but not all of it.
Funny how I accepted this eyesore forever and felt a little sad when the earthquake caused to be removed. Now I can't imagine this freeway ever being there - the beauty and openess of the ferry building and wharf area are a true treasure of the San Francisco experience.
Is it clean in that part today?
San Francisco got rid of a giant concrete eyesore. Now if SF can get rid of syringes, needles and feces on the streets it might become a place worth visiting or living in again!
I lived in the Bay Area around 99-02. This video blew my mind. I never knew this freeway ever existed.
Great video. Thanks from a SF native too young to remember this time.
I am not aware of traffic congestion in downtown San Francisco, and I also admire pedestrian friendly boulevards but in large cities with millions of people, a grade separate right of way, whether it is for pedestrian, railway or motor vehicles, is something required despite of the downsides it has. Like I said, I also admire pedestrian friendly streets on ground level and this is why I think Boston's Big Dig was a prime example of how we should handle the ugly decay of viaducts spread out nationwide. I know it comes at a great price, but nothing comes easy after building a huge vein of traffic in urban areas. It would have been better if nothing was built there in the first place, but once these gigantic veins are built, a replacement should follow. Rose Pak indeed did have her point.
I used to take the Embarcadero Freeway to get to my office. It saved me several minutes per day. I’m actually glad they took it down because it really was an eyesore.
I love going to SFO for work... and stay in that area and go to the fary building and all the shops and everything around there. I could not imagine that being a big freeway!!! The current route and art work and views are awesome... so glad they didn't rebuild the freeway. it looks so much nicer and SFO is such a nice city to walk in, even in the summer, that its best to walk or take the BART to get around.
I used to drive on that freeway. It was the fastest way to get from the Bay Bridge to down town and North Beach. Traffic turned to gridlock after they tore it down.
I hear the arguments about the freeway ruining the view all the time. For me it was just the opposite. The best view was while driving along that freeway, or better yet as a passenger. It was definitely scary underneath it though, so that aspect was definitely improved. However, nowadays all of San Francisco is scary and I'm not being facetious.
"crowned by a 45 foot tall clock tower." -- It is actually 245 feet tall.
I don’t remember the Embarcadero freeway since I didn’t spend any time in SF at that time. I only know the beautiful walk from the Ferry Building to Oracle Park. But I definitely remember the 880 freeway in the east bay that collapsed in the earthquake. My mom and I used to drive along that freeway to San Jose every month in the ‘80s. That evening, I had parked myself in front of our TV, waiting for the World Series to begin. That was one weekend I had insisted to my mom that we stay home and watch the series.
That freeway should have become a underground tunnel for people who wish to bypass the embarcadero.
I think the issue was money, because of protests it wouldn’t have passed because of the risk of damage to property and permits.
Fantastic documentary of something I recognised but did not know the history of.
Fascinating. Love this series. Thank you.
I remember only a little bit about this freeway. My dad was a newspaper driver, so he drove it often. A portion on 280 in the city was also closed after the earthquake for a long time, but they refurbished that and now it's the best way to get to the Embarcadero from the Peninsula, ending at 3rd St near the baseball stadium.
I was on a TDY out to SF last year and its funny, the routes that you document are actually sometimes how the GPS will route you, almost as if it is trying to take the old planned route. Great video as always and thank you for the history and research
Outstanding history lesson! This vid generated many happy memories for me as I lived in the east bay but worked in or near the City for twenty years.
Ruairidh, can you make a video on the Citroën SM?
I like all your videos, but Places - Lost in Time is always something unexpected.
Thank you very much! That was really interesting.
Possibly post-war construction activities - particularly for car traffic - has destroyed more of cities and towns in Germany than than the damage caused by war, eg arial bombings etc.
It destoys the social fabric of cities.
I am glad that in the netherlands reason kicked in again relativly early and a lot of cities have been spared this mindless destruction. Not all where so lucky though, like rotterdam, but a lot where.
Same in the UK. Thankfully they weren't able to do half of what they wanted to do.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 true. One smart thing that Italy did is to keep freeways outside of city limits. Almost every Italian city I can think of is designed this way. Don't know why in USA, they blast multiple freeways through downtown areas, very strange.
@@stevens1041 in the netherlands they didn't put the highways trough the cities either, but still crossed the city with 4 lanes of asphalt all trough the city and made them troughways. Not sure what they are called in english. Pretty much what you see in the usa as well. And it was supposed to be like that everywhere but it was stopped relativly early on.
What did happen was generally changing everything to provide for cars everywhere, parking everywhere. Surrounded by trafic all the time, if you wanted to go anywhere you basicly had to be stuck in trafic because everyone had to drive everywhere.
But this has been reversing since the 90s luckilly. Slowly pushing out cars more and more from where people have to live and designing things that you no longer need a car to do most daily things.
Cities don't need to be paved grey hellholes. They are just made to be like that.
Really? Car traffic has destroyed more that literally thousands of tonnes of bombs?
It was great to see a video on something so close to home for me!
As a kid I loved the double decker Embarcadero freeway as well as the connection of then Highway 17 to the MacArthur Maze.
Great video. What a journey. A tragic story with a happy ending.
Great video as always. Also Seattle had a very similar multi story freeway by the waterfront called the Alaska Way Viaduct, it was torn down a few years ago due to Earthquake risks of the old structure and it was replaced by an underground tunnel which turned in to a bit of a mess when the tunnel boring machine broke down underground but it was completed and it opened up the waterfront view which his nice. The issue with San Francisco is that it sits right on the 101 freeway so anyone going North-South is forced on to the surface streets of SF even if they do not plan to stop in the city, this can be people form WA, OR, Northern CA, Napa Valley and all the many cities along the coast to get down to LA. and back
You do know there’s planes going from Oregon to Los Angeles, San Diego, etc.? People moving willingly by car N-S can use any other route east of the bay, which is better for SF and better for the motorists.
@@pjotrtje0NL Nothing to do with flying you have local people commuting all around the Bay Area from Sanoma, napa and all the other cities down to San Jose it's all just one big busy area and people have to cross SF to get to the other side on the 101. When I drive down from Seattle I am on vacation, we stop at friends in other cities and i usually have with me 2 or 3 other people and many items, last time I had with me a trailer and a sofa I refinished for them. Just a hobby. I sometimes drive down on 101 and back up north on I5 or the other way around. In winter i5 mountain passes can be a problem this winter I had to wait for the road to open due to heavy snow it's also difficult drive, very steep and many curves like at Lakehead and other parts of the road but in summer its all good, also I sometimes take 97 or 395 but that is to combine travel and vacation in to one.
@@pjotrtje0NLhmm but I thought planes ✈️ caused global warming . Must be a fake liberal / leftist
Excellent historical content, I grew up in San Jose while the Embarcadero Freeway was in place, and always wondered about the story behind the iconic and now fully-visible clock tower. Thanks for the education!
I used to drive on the elevated Embarcadero every day, from 1980 to 1984. (I still remember the wonderful small of roasting coffee coming from the Folgers coffee plant-long since converted to other uses-beneath the freeway.) It was an amazing transportation artery and an urban abomination. The elevated roadway cast a perpetual shadow and physically isolated the shore from the rest of the city. The area was like a ghost town. Tearing it down was the first step in a glorious transformation into one of the most amazing urban waterfront settings in America. It’s filled with strollers, runners, cyclists, and shoppers enjoying sunshine and amazing vistas every day.
Absolutely fascinating - and chilling - even though I've only been to San Francisco on one brief visit.
What I've always found fascinating is all the areas that had ramps and connectors are still visible as voids or empty lots with weird elevations or strangely curved buildings and surface streets. There's a lot of that too in West Oakland with the old train spur easements and warehouses. And even farther into the East Bay if you follow the light rail lines. All cities are built on the bones of the previous. If you want a fun wormhole look up google earth for wherever You live and then compare it to historic maps. I am not responsible for the lost days you will find when you come out of that trip.
@ 2:00 : HUGE glaring mistake re: the ferry terminal clock tower..... the subtitles AND narration both state it is 45 foot tall , but it is of course 245 foot tall (75m).
First drove on the Embarcadero Freeway in 1972. Parents just moved to Orinda and my father's office was in the Ferry Building. To leave I would drive down Embarcadero to Broadway and then onto the freeway. I moved up from San Diego in 1977 for grad school and was on the road hundreds of time. In 1983 I moved from the East Bay to the Richmond District and used the Central Freeway daily until Loma Prieta. Moved out of The City in 1998 to the East Bay where my office was. Will say The City sure was a great place to live in the 70-90's and no doubt in the 50-60's. Not so much now as the middle class has pretty much left.
The Embarcadero freeway when opened in 1959 did not go in front of "the iconic Hyatt Rengency" since that structure wasn't built until 1973. Driving on the Embarcadero Freeway was quite fun, but I am glad it was removed.
I remember riding in my parents car along this freeway…. The area looked a lot different when the freeway cast a big shadow on the streets and piers.
So glad they removed it. The ferry building is much better after it became an accessible shopping center on the waterfront.
I remember this all very well.
Now drive these streets often.
I lived in San Francisco for a few years in college, back in 2005-08, and I'm glad all of that was torn down. It's such a lovely view along the Embarcadero, I can't imagine having that big, ugly, concrete monstrosity running through there.
Thank you for not holding any punches when describing this blight. Sadly this type of car-first thinking still dominates.
That was brutal.
One could only fantasize of how that dump by the bay would have developed if the 1955 plan was fully executed. 🤠
This was so entertaining, I learned so much as well. Great presentation
Excellent broadcast
Good video on the history of the clash between protestor and the highway planning committee regarding the building of freeways in the city of San Francisco.
12:12 Procol Harum and Pink Floyd at the Fillmore! How did I miss that concert? At the time I only lived 25 miles across the Bay from San Francisco. Oh, wait a minute. I was 6 years old. That explains why I missed it.
Thank you for sharing this interesting history.
Thanks for this. It really shows the displacement of folks in early 1900s from destructive freeway "innovation", at the time. Moreover, shows issues of traffic issues in mid to late 1900s as well
Tip: Marin County's name is not pronounced "Martin", but "Muh-RYNN". Like in King's Lynn UK.
Reminds me of the Green Way and the Big Dig in Boston, a similar massive concrete highway structure replaced by tunnels
I was on the Embarcadero during the 89 earthquake. I drove the Embarcadero every day for years. It became almost impossible to get from one of the City to the other after it was torn down. Took hours, a real nightmare. Instead of getting off work at 3 PM it was 6 PM. I hated losing it. Glad I left there.
👍Very Interesting. How about a video on the Terminal Tower train station & complex in Cleveland, Ohio, USA? that would be really cool!
Tower city was and is a modern marvel
Here for it
Great video. I used to commute down the Embarcadero for years, it's interesting to see what it once was.
Many wild parrots live in the city. There were trees that grew next to the highway where parrots would hang out. It was great seeing them on the way to work
Telegraph Hill, right?
As a native San Franciscan great video
This whole time had no idea the Embarcadero freeway existed. It would’ve been so nice if they kept it for it to connect between the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate because now you have to go through the whole downtown area.
I’ve always lived in Marin County (pronounced Ma-RIN, not MAR-in), just north of the Golden Gate Bridge and spent my whole career commuting to San Francisco’s Financial District. I usually took the bus, but sometimes the ferry, instead, which took longer. The Embarcadero Freeway was hated by everyone. I was just in North Beach, on my homebound commute, when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake hit. When I later returned to my office, the flagpole on the Ferry Building was bent over and stayed that way for years to come. The Embarcadero Freeway was shored up by huge stacks of 12 x 12 lumber at the crossing to the Ferry Building. We were all thrilled when the hated Embarcadero Freeway was finally demolished. The Embarcadero (Street) was refurbished afterward and looks so much better. I just wish they had installed native redwoods along the center of this street instead of the alien palm trees they did. Some tropical plants can live here, but that doesn’t mean that they should. It now looks like Santa Barbara.
At least with all the crime in San Francisco traffic isn’t a problem
I miss this freeway 🛣️ ❤
Take a breath every now and then. Some quiet moments would really add something.
I remember taking it to Pier 39 on school field trips when I was kid.
I mean...seems like it must've looked like a blight from pretty much any vantage from inside the city. But it must've been really fun to drive. Especially for tourists.
thank you for this. I bet the freeway would still be there if not for the earthquake
Outstanding reporting
Removing the Embarcadero fwy was the best thing that happened to San Francisco at that time. Most of the thru traffic that was headed north to Marin County was routed along Van Ness. This route was always busy, night and day. I felt sorry for the folk living along Van Ness.
Dude! Thank you this was fantastic.