• Patricia's Green
• Octavia Boulevard
• SF Jazz Center
• Davies Symphony Hall

Hayes Valley takes its name from Hayes Street, which was named for Colonel Thomas Hayes, San Francisco's county clerk from 1853 to 1856 and a large landholder in the district. Hayes's brother Michael, serving on the committee that named the Western Addition's streets in the 1850s, is credited with naming the street in Thomas's honor. After the 1849 Gold Rush, Italian immigrants from the Genoa region farmed the sandy soil of the valley, and the neighborhood built out in the late nineteenth century with Victorian and Edwardian townhouses lining streets named for prominent citizens and families — Hayes, Gough, McAllister — while the smaller workers' homes occupied botanically named lanes such as Lily, Ivy, and Linden. Hayes Valley south of McAllister Street escaped the fires that followed the 1906 earthquake, preserving one of the city's most intact collections of Victorian residential fabric.

In the 1950s, the Central Freeway was constructed through the neighborhood, severing Hayes Street and suppressing commercial life for decades. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the elevated structure, and community advocates — including Patricia Walkup, for whom Patricia's Green park is named — led the campaign for its demolition. The freeway's removal in stages through 2005 transformed Hayes Valley, and the blocks around Octavia Boulevard and Hayes Street emerged as a vibrant corridor of independent boutiques and restaurants. SF Jazz, the Davies Symphony Hall, and the War Memorial Opera House anchor the neighborhood's eastern edge.

Hayes Valley's story — from Italian truck farms to Victorian enclave to freeway scar to urban revival — is one of San Francisco's most complete neighborhood arcs, and MY-NHD apparel carries it with pride.