Grant Avenue

For the Pittsburgh street, see Grant Street. For the New York City Subway station, see Grant Avenue (IND Fulton Street Line). For the former New York City Subway station, see Grant Avenue (BMT Fulton Street Line).

Grant Avenue
Construction
Grant Avenue at Bush Street: The "Dragon Gate" at the entrance to Chinatown
Former name(s)	Calle de la Fundacion, Dupont Street
Location	San Francisco, California
Postal code	94108
Coordinates	37°47′51″N 122°24′25″W / 37.79748°N 122.40692°W / 37.79748; -122.40692
Inauguration	1845

Grant Avenue in San Francisco, California is one of the oldest streets in the city's Chinatown district. It runs in a north-south direction starting at Market Street in the heart of downtown and dead-ending past Francisco Street in the North Beach district. It resumes at North Point Street and stretches one block to The Embarcadero and the foot of Pier 39.

Grant Avenue is primarily a one-way street; automobile traffic can only travel northbound. In 2012, however, the two blocks of Grant Avenue between Sutter Street and Geary Boulevard were converted to two way traffic in order to ease southbound traffic congestion during the multi-year closure of Stockton Street, part of the construction plan for the Central Subway.

History

When California came under the control of the United States following the Mexican-American War, the street now called Grant was named Dupont Street, in honor of a Naval admiral from the USS Portsmouth (Portsmouth Square, located one block east, was named after that ship). In the following years, Dupont Street became the location for various opium dens, brothels, and Tong wars.

When San Francisco was rebuilt after being leveled in the 1906 earthquake, Dupont Street was upgraded and given a new name: Grant Avenue, after President Ulysses S. Grant.

Today, the intersection of Grant Avenue and Bush Street marks the southern entrance to Chinatown. Grant Avenue is still written and said in Chinese as "Dupont Gai" (都板街, Gai 街 means street), and in a play on this name there had been a restaurant on the avenue called "Dupont Thai," now Henry's Hunan Chinese restaurant.

References

SanFranciscoChinatown.com: Grant Avenue in San Francisco

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Grant Avenue, San Francisco.

Streets in San Francisco

Numbered streets	Third Street 16th Street 19th Avenue 22nd Street 24th Street 49-Mile Scenic Drive

North–south streets	Castro Street Clay Street Fillmore Street Grant Avenue Great Highway Junipero Serra Boulevard Kearny Street Mission Street Montgomery Street Octavia Boulevard Polk Street Skyline Boulevard Stockton Street Stanyan Street Van Ness Avenue Vermont Street

East–west streets	Broadway California Street Filbert Street Geary Boulevard Haight Street Lincoln Way Lombard Street Union Street

Diagonal streets	Alemany Boulevard Don Chee Way The Embarcadero Market Street Columbus Avenue New Montgomery Street

Alleyways	Balmy Alley Belden Place Clarion Alley Jack Kerouac Alley Macondray Lane Maiden Lane

San Francisco place names etymologies

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/10/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.