• Ferry Building
• Central Embarcadero Piers Historic District
• Herb Caen Way
• Embarcadero Station

The Embarcadero takes its name from the Spanish verb embarcar — 'to embark' — a direct reference to its centuries-old function as the primary point of departure and arrival for San Francisco's maritime commerce. San Francisco's original shoreline ran near present-day Montgomery Street; over five decades beginning in the 1860s, a massive engineered seawall was constructed and the tidal mudflats filled, extending the city eastward to create the three-mile waterfront corridor we know today. The California Gold Rush of 1849 established the Embarcadero as the gateway to the American West, with hundreds of ships crowding Yerba Buena Cove and the transcontinental railroad reaching the waterfront by 1869.

The Central Embarcadero Piers Historic District, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, encompasses piers, seawall, and waterfront buildings dating from 1848 to 1946. The Ferry Building, completed in 1898 and modeled after a twelfth-century bell tower in Seville, served as the transit hub for 50,000 daily ferry commuters before the Bay Bridge opened in 1936. After the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the waterfront underwent a landmark renaissance that reunited the city with its bay.

From Gold Rush gateway to twenty-first century promenade, the Embarcadero has always been where San Francisco meets the sea. MY-NHD's Embarcadero collection honors those who feel that pull to the waterfront.