~ Rocco's Weekly Specials ~

  ~ SOMA History ~

Development South of Market and in Block 3703 between Market & Mission

In the jargon of the City's history, the Seventh and Mission area, Block 3703, lay "South of the Slot."  Wrote Jack London: "The Slot was an iron crack that ran along the center of Market Street, and from the Slot arose the burr of the ceaseless, endless cable. North of the Slot were theater, hotels, and shopping districts, banks and respectable houses. South of the Slot were the factories, slums, laundries, machine shops, boiler works, and the abodes of [the] working class [from Cherny 1986:53]."

In 1900, one out of every five people in San Francisco lived between Market and Townsend Streets, from the waterfront to Eleventh Street. Those boundaries, however did not enclose a homogenous work or living place. Closer to the wharves were the boiler factories and foundries, the homes of sailors and waterfront workers, the breweries and multiplicity of saloons. The most desirable sites in the neighborhood were occupied by saloons. San Francisco had more sailors than any other American city, even more than New York. As one looked to areas west and toward the Eleventh Street boundary, despite the many single male "lodgers," there were more women and families proportionately than in other areas of the city. ~To be continued