• Transamerica Pyramid
• Ferry Building
• Jackson Square Historic District
• Embarcadero Center

The Financial District occupies land that was once Yerba Buena Cove — a shallow inlet progressively filled as the Gold Rush transformed a small trading post into the commercial capital of the American West. When gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1848, San Francisco's population exploded from roughly 1,000 to 25,000 in under two years, and the waterfront blocks around Montgomery Street became the banking and trading hub for the entire Pacific Coast. By the 1860s and 1870s, the intersection of California and Montgomery Streets had earned the title 'Wall Street of the West.'

The neighborhood was nearly leveled in the 1906 earthquake and fire, but its concentration of masonry financial buildings survived better than most of the city and was largely rebuilt by 1910. The Transamerica Pyramid, completed in 1972 on the site of the historic Montgomery Block building, anchors Transamerica Redwood Park and has become the defining element of San Francisco's skyline. Beneath the Financial District's streets lies a literal graveyard of Gold Rush-era ships — estimates suggest more than one hundred vessels were abandoned and buried as the cove was filled.

The Financial District was built on ambition, gold, and reclaimed bay mud — a foundation as improbable as San Francisco itself. MY-NHD's Financial District collection is for those who understand the city's commercial origins.