When cars were kings
Van Ness Avenue is named after James Van Ness, who, in 1855, became the city’s seventh mayor. He was best known for having tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the lynching of two accused murderers by a vigilante group called the Committee of Vigilance. Such was the city’s judicial system in 1856.
Van Ness Avenue, which stretches from Market Street to the bay, served as a critical firebreak during the earthquake of 1906, and then became “Auto Row” for the next 75 years. At its height, the area was 22 blocks long and 3 blocks wide, and was filled with nearly 300 buildings devoted to car showrooms, garages, and repair shops. But in the early 1980s, high sales commissions, rising real-estate prices and an influx of Japanese cars led to the demise of the famed automotive center.
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Address 1000 Van Ness Avenue, 901 Van Ness Avenue & 999 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94109 | Public Transport Bus: 47, 49 (Van Ness Ave & O’Farrell St stop) | Tip Take a class in pizza making or learn the fine art of pastry at the SF Cooking School, located in one of the restored old car-dealership buildings, at 690 Van Ness Avenue.
Some of the buildings on Auto Row, particularly those built in the teens and twenties, included spectacularly opulent showrooms—none more than Don Lee’s Cadillac at 1000 Van Ness, now an AMC multiplex. Just inside the entrance you will still find the well-preserved lavish marble floors, crystal chandeliers, and grand staircase. It was all designed to suggest the power and grandeur of a revolutionary personal object whose engineering and design reflected the very essence of freedom and status, particularly in California.
Similar in its luxurious ballroom-like appearance was architect Bernard Maybeck’s Packard showroom at 901 Van Ness. The current space, now occupied by British Motor Car, retains the dramatically tall marble columns and other original architectural elements. Down the block, at 999, the former Chevrolet dealership is one of the most beautiful remnants of Auto Row’s glory days, with its Art Deco, Streamline Moderne exterior, featuring a rounded-corner exterior, a circular awning over the entrance, and an elegant black-and-yellow clock above the glass showroom windows.
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