John King, the Chronicle’s excellent urban design writer, is taking a look at the “re-imagining” going on about the public space surrounding San Francisco’s most famous transit shrine: the old Ferry Building streetcar loop.

The goal is to create a lively crossroads of enticing fun, rather than the 20 acres of scenic but little-used space that now spills inland from the Ferry Building. Chicago’s lakefront is a model: Millennium Park, where 24.5 acres of train tracks were transformed into a wildly popular phantasmagoria that draws locals and tourists alike. Or Grant Park, where President-elect Barack Obama spoke on election night to more than 200,000 people.

Ferry Loop, around 1927. San Francisco Municipal Railway archives.

Most of the space in question, now called Justin Herman Plaza, was created at the same time as the Embarcadero Freeway went up in the 1950s, by “redeveloping” (in this case bulldozing) a block of older buildings, mostly sailors’ haunts, between Market and Mission Streets, Steuart Street and The Embarcadero, along with other buildings, on the blocks north of Market. As part of the massive redevelopment, the old Produce District gave way to the Golden Gateway residential complex and Embarcadero Center’s office highrises and hotels. The foot of Market itself was cut back a block, with a aggregate pedestrian way replacing the last block of vehicular use between Steuart and The Embarcadero. And the traditional transit loop (streetcars until 1949, then buses) in front of the Ferry Building, disappeared, with the bus turnaround relocated to an asphalt lot at Mission and Steuart Streets.

This aerial view, courtesy Google, shows the open space around the foot of Market Street is considerable, but very chopped up. (Click to enlarge.)

When the Embarcadero Freeway was finally vanquished after the 1989 earthquake, the roadway area itself was remade into a grand boulevard, including the F-line streetcar right-of-way. The asphalt bus turnaround became the trendy Hotel Vitale, bringing Muni millions in lease revenue (and a home for Market Street Railway’s San Francisco Railway Museum). But the old brick and concrete plaza was little changed (though because it’s technically parkland, the F-line wasn’t allowed to follow streetcars’ traditional path straight down Market to the Ferry Building, but had to loop along Steuart to the south end of the plaza).

Now city planners are rethinking the whole plaza configuration. Streetcars will frame the project visually as well as providing the most visible and attractive transit to and from this new gathering place.

So what do our readers think this new space should look like, and what should it be used for? Let us know in the comments below.

If you build it, will they run? Not in Philadelphia, apparently. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on 3,000 feet of brand new streetcar track and wires on a historic transit street, Germantown Avenue, that’s likely to just gather rust, despite the strong desire of neighbors for streetcars. What’s up? Well, the transit agency, SEPTA, which “temporarily” took trolleys off the street in 1992, says buses are better, never mind what residents think, never mind the $3 million in state funds to put down new tracks and wires at the residents’ request as part of a street overhaul.  This is, as Yogi would say, “deja vu all over again.” SEPTA dragged its feet for years when residents on Girard Avenue demanded that the 15-line there be restored to PCCs. Editorial comment: all San Franciscans who complain about Muni, take a field trip and see SEPTA.

Nothing evokes vanished San Francisco more than the old California Street Cable Railroad Company, more familiarly known as “Cal Cable.” This private company, founded by Leland Stanford, operated cable cars from 1878 to 1951, when it went bankrupt and was taken over by Muni. After that, politicians effectively dismembered it, and we’re still talking about whether its remnants can be improved.

Cal Cable’s three lines, California Street from Market to Presidio Avenue, O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde Streets from the downtown shopping district to Aquatic Park, and the five block shuttle on lower Jones Street, traversed both snooty and modest neighborhoods. More than that, it was a self-contained small business serving the public successfully for decades, only to be overtaken by a dramatically changing world. This has all been captured with a wonderful array of rarely seen pictures and detailed narrative by two transit historians, Emiliano Echeverria and the late Walter Rice, in a book from the Arcadia history series, San Francisco’s California Street Cable Cars. For a window into a bygone San Francisco, this book is worth a read. It’s available at our San Francisco Railway Museum, at a number of bookshops around the city, or online.

On Tuesday, October 28, at 11 a.m. at Castro and Market Streets, PCC streetcar No. 1051, painted in Muni’s 1970s green and cream “simplified” livery, will be dedicated to Harvey Milk for his advocacy of public transit during his all-too-brief tenure as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978. At that time, Milk was the only member of the Board who rode Muni every day, and he was the first Board Member to use the then-new Fast Pass regularly. The streetcar dedication is co-sponsored by Muni and Market Street Railway and will complement the many other tributes paid to Harvey Milk as a human rights pioneer. The public is invited to attend.

The choice of this car to honor Harvey Milk is based both on its livery — the same as the streetcars he rode every day from the time he was elected Supervisor to his assassination on November 27, 1978 — and on the fact that this car makes an appearance in the new movie “Milk” which has its world premiere that same evening, October 28, at the Castro Theater.

UPDATE: The Monday Chronicle has a story on the Harvey Milk streetcar.

In one of those tragedies that just leaves you feeling so hollow, a young man — and friend of the vintage streetcars — has been taken from us. His name was Pippin Seales. He was playing with two friends in a cave at Natural Bridges State Park in Santa Cruz on October 11 when it collapsed on them. One friend got out, one was injured, and Pippin was killed. He had just turned 11.

He was a boy with an amazing range of interests according to the remembrance published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. One of those interests was rail transportation:

More than one family vacation was centered around trains: steam railways in Britain, rail travel in California, streetcars in San Francisco. He was passionately interested in public transit, and in the hours he spent planning & working on his model train layout with his father - drawing wiring diagrams, solving design issues, perusing catalogs - he always kept alive the connection between the imaginary world he was creating and the real world of trolleys, buses, streetcars, and trains. He would have made an excellent civil engineer.

Pippin’s family named Market Street Railway as one of the two causes to which donations could be sent in his memory. We have already received a number of them. If you’d like to join in honoring Pippin, you may donate to our acquisition and restoration fund, as Pippin’s family designated.

The Los Angeles Times ran a troubling story saying that many large transit agencies, Muni among them, could face big-time financial problems because of rail car lease deals gone sour in the current economic meltdown. The Times noted that between 1980 and 2003, many transit properties sold their rail cars and leased them back, reaping a one-time cash infusion. But in the case of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, at least, the leases — with the troubled financial services giant AIG — may have to be paid back suddenly, which would require drastic service cuts.

The Times story offered no details on Muni’s situation, and we haven’t seen any specifics on it in local coverage. We do know that Muni sold, then leased back, its LRV fleet around 2003. We also know that at the time some Muni staffers wanted to include the vintage streetcar fleet in the lease, but Market Street Railway objected and the idea never went anywhere.

So, at least the F-line cars won’t be making any unscheduled stops on Wall Street.

Muni No. 176 and a couple of Twin trolley coaches pass Weinstein’s department store near Sixth Street. Clark Frazier photo.

Few felt it, but a seismic shift in American culture had begun. Grandfatherly Ike was President, friendly dairyman George Christopher was Mayor, stalwart Republicans both. Most white, middle-class San Franciscans (the majority then) saw these as comfortable times, and change as not terribly threatening.

Now over there in North Beach, we’re getting some weirdos: Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, what was that Herb Caen dubbed them? Oh, yeah, beatniks, like Sputnik, that Russian satellite. Those Russians are getting a little scary with their nuclear weapons, but the kids took those ‘duck and cover’ lessons in school, so I guess we’re ready.

From Second Street, looking east … no PCCs in sight. Clark Frazier photo.

Speaking of the kids, they might be going a little wild with that Elvis and those other rock-and-roll guys, but hey, the wife did the same with Sinatra when she was a kid. Meantime, we’ve got the best town in the world here, and to prove it, we’re getting a major league baseball team next year. Took ‘em away from New York City. Seals Stadium’s not big enough, but it’ll only be for a couple of years, because we’re going to build the most modern stadium in the country out at Candlestick Point. With parking for 12,000 cars!

As part of our mission, Market Street Railway creates displays on-board the historic streetcars to educate San Franciscans and visitors on interesting aspects of the city’s transit history. We call it the Museums in Motion project. This is an online version of one of those displays.

Last day of the Castro Cable, April 5, 1941. Market Street Railway photo.

Today, the electric streetcars of the F‑line take you out Market Street to the Castro. But before there were streetcars on Market, people traveled from the Ferry Building to Castro by cable car! And then they could continue on the same cable car over the hill on Castro all the way to 26th Street in Noe Valley.

From 1883 until the great earthquake and fire of 1906, cable cars ran on Market Street. Aside from the Castro cable car line, underground cables pulled cars along Market on other routes that branched off at McAllister, Hayes, Haight, and Valencia Streets. The Market Street cable cars were larger than the surviving Powell Street and California Street cable cars, but they weren’t any faster.

Boys help the conductor reverse Castro Cable car No. 4 at the 26th Street turntable, about 1940.

After the quake, speedier electric streetcars took over those old Market Street cable car routes, except for the portion of the Castro route from 18th to 26th Street. That isolated stretch of the ‘Castro Cable’ was too steep for streetcars and carried on as a quiet neighborhood shuttle line that Noe Valley people took to reach the 8-line streetcar near the Castro Theater to continue their trip downtown. The Castro Cable lasted until 1941, when it was replaced by an extension of the 24-line bus.

And those original Market Street cable car routes that converted to electric streetcars in 1906? After World War II, they became electric trolley bus lines, the 5, 7, and 21 among them. The 8-Castro line streetcar converted to trolley bus as well, but then went back to the future in 1995, when it became an electric streetcar again: today’s F-line!

Typical of the time, a neighborhood boy uses the Castro Cable to hitch a ride on his bike, headed south near 21st Street, around 1940.

Cable cars on Castro Street are now just a fond but distant memory. That little neighborhood line was literally and figuratively a long way from today’s surviving cable car routes. Even before World War II, the Powell Street and California Street cable car lines carried a lot of visitors to the city and got all the publicity. If you ran into a tourist on the Castro Cable, you could be pretty sure he or she was just lost.

Market Street Railway will be operating a booth at the Castro Street Fair this Sunday, October 5, from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, and we’re happy to announce that we will be showing off one of the seldom-seen members of Muni’s historic streetcar fleet: Market Street Railway Co. car No. 578.

Market Street Railway photo.

Built in 1895, this single-truck ‘Dinky’ is — to our knowledge — the world’s oldest trolley in active municipal service (so old, it looks like a cable car!). So, come on down and have a look, learn all about the car, climb onboard and ring the bell, and hang out with some of the folks from Market Street Railway.

Our booth will be at the F-line terminal at Market, Castro & 17th Streets. We’ll be selling unique F-line and cable car related merchandise, and we’ll have information about MSR, our projects and volunteer opportunities.

Speaking of volunteer opportunities, we still need a little more help to staff the booth and guide people around No. 578, so if you’re interested in volunteering for this event, please email our volunteer coordinator, Nick Figone, as soon as possible.

San Francisco history podcast Sparkletack returned a few weeks ago from a long hiatus with a weekly time capsule. Each episode normally tells just one story from local history, but host Richard Miller is using these time capsules to cover nuggets from San Francisco’s past that don’t quite warrant an entire program of their own.

And this week’s time capsule is how I learned it was 44 years ago today — October 1st, 1964 — when our cable cars became a National Landmark.

“It was an especially poignant moment for the ‘Cable Car Lady’ Friedell Klussman, whose outrage at the City’s 1947 eradication plan had led her to form the “Citizen’s Committee to Save the Cable Cars”. Mrs. Klussman’s single-minded determination is the number one reason that lucky tourists can still wait in hour-long lines at the Powell Street Turnaround.”

The story of how the cables cars were almost lost entirely could be an entire episode itself.