The Story of Polk Street

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  Looking south from Sacramento & Polk
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  The sign at Sacramento & Polk
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  Shopfronts along the way

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Polk Street is what a main street is supposed to be: a few dozen blocks of shopkeepers who know their trade, set down in the middle of a great city.

The street runs from Ghirardelli Square at Beach Street, at the north end, south to Market Street near City Hall and the Civic Center. Tucked along the west side of Nob and Russian Hill, it sits in one of San Francisco's kinder microclimates — the fog tends to pass it by.

The history here is nearly as old as the city itself. The street takes its name from James K. Polk, eleventh President of the United States. The fires that followed the 1906 earthquake took most of what stood on Polk, and a good number of today's older buildings went up directly on the ruins of the ones that burned.

Come summer, the whole street closes to traffic for the Polk Street Festival — live music, dancing, food and art, all of it out in the open air.