• Octagon House
• Union Street
• Casebolt Mansion Site
• Palace of Fine Arts

Cow Hollow takes its name directly from its mid-19th-century function: a low-lying valley filled with freshwater springs and grassy meadows that San Franciscans quickly converted to dairy farming as the city expanded during the Gold Rush. Originally called Spring Valley, the area between Van Ness Avenue and the Presidio was home to at least thirty dairies by the early 1870s, with operators including a dairy owned by Hatman on the block bounded by Union, Filbert, Franklin, and Gough Streets. Union Street itself follows the unpaved road that once linked the growing city with the Presidio. By 1891, the Board of Health ordered all livestock out and the lagoon was filled in, clearing the way for residential development. Prominent Victorian mansions rose along the street lines — including the Casebolt mansion at Union and Pierce, and the Octagon House at Gough and Union built by William McElroy.

The neighborhood survived the 1906 earthquake largely intact, preserving its Victorian and Edwardian building stock into the 20th century. In the 1950s, Union Street was reimagined as a shopping destination, with carriage houses and barns converted into boutiques and restaurants — a transformation that established the neighborhood's enduring character as one of San Francisco's most prized residential and commercial districts.

The dairy pastures that gave Cow Hollow its name are long gone, but the neighborhood's story of transformation — from Spring Valley to city showpiece — is exactly the kind of history MY-NHD apparel is made to wear.