Cultural Life

Arts
A great part of San Francisco’s appeal has been its well-established
image as a cultural centre. By 1880 it boasted one of the largest opera
houses in the country, the largest hotel, a public park, great churches
and synagogues, and a skyline bristling with the mansions of
millionaires. Drama and music flourished there, with appearances by
such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, Edwin Booth, Luisa
Tetrazzini, James O’Neill, Lillie Langtry, and Lotta Crabtree. Isadora
Duncan, in fact, began teaching modern dance in San Francisco.

The city’s true artistic calling, however, has been as a mecca for
writers. One of the first was Mark Twain, who arrived in time for the
great silver boom that came some 10 years after the gold boom faded.
Other noted writers were Ambrose Bierce, who came to the city after
horrendous experiences in the American Civil War, Jack London, Bret
Harte, Frank Norris, Gertrude Atherton, and Robert Louis Stevenson,
who lived in great poverty in a boarding house; later came Dashiell
Hammett, Stewart Edward White, Kathleen Norris, Erskine
Caldwell, William Saroyan, and Wallace Stegner. During the mid-
1950s, San Francisco became known as a centre of the Beat
movement, and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore,
which was the country’s first to sell paperbacks, became one of the
movement’s best-known gathering places. More recent Bay Area
authors are Amy Tan, Herbert Gold, Anne Lamott, Ethan Canin,
Danielle Steele, and Dave Eggers.

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 San Francisco: City Lights bookstoreWindow of City Lights
bookstore, San Francisco.Manakin—iStock/Getty Images

San Francisco is home to two major musical institutions. The San

Francisco Symphony performs in the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
and gives pop concerts in the summer. The San Francisco Opera stages
an early season to allow its leading singers to fulfill their commitments
at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. With the exception
of American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), a resident repertory
group, the professional theatre is virtually nonexistent in the city. The
surviving downtown theatres are largely occupied by the touring casts
of successful Broadway shows.

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 American Conservatory Theater, San FranciscoAmerican
Conservatory Theater, San Francisco, California.Andreas Praefcke
San Franciscans believe their city is a haven for the artist. While this
would hold true for those who value architecture and public sculpture,
the painting collections do not rival those of Los Angeles or the East
Coast. Notable, however, are the jades and porcelains in the Asian
Museum, the Rodin sculptures at the California Palace of the Legion of
Honor, the downtown Museum of Modern Art, and the many
treasures in such small museums as the Fire Department Pioneer
Memorial Museum. While San Francisco’s artistic community does
not approach the prominence of its writing establishment, it has
produced such notable figures as Wayne Thiebaud and Richard
Diebenkorn.

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 Cultural institutions

Learn about the redesigned de Young Museum of Art, CaliforniaA

discussion concerning the redesigned de Young Museum of San Francisco,
from the documentary Riches, Rivals, and Radicals: 100 Years of Museums in
America.Great Museums Television (A Britannica Publishing Partner)See all videos for
this article

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Experience the life of Frank Oppenheimer, his Exploratorium at San

Francisco, and the history of children's museumA discussion of science and
children's museums, including San Francisco's Exploratorium, from the
documentary Riches, Rivals & Radicals: 100 Years of Museums in America.Great
Museums Television (A Britannica Publishing Partner)See all videos for this article

Several cultural institutions were constructed after the 1906

earthquake, among them the Civic Center (a lovely square sparkling
with fountains surrounded by such Renaissance revival-style buildings
as City Hall), the public library, and the civic auditorium. Publisher
M.H. de Young helped fund the building of the de Young
Museum (now under the aegis of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,
as is the Legion of Honor) in Golden Gate Park, and Adolph and Alma
de Bretteville Spreckels sponsored the stately California Palace of the
Legion of Honor, which overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge. A
spectacular reminder of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International
Exposition is found in the monumental Palace of Fine Arts, located in
a little park near the waterfront in the Marina District. Housing
the Exploratorium (a science museum), the palace is a giant
Neoclassical rotunda, which was designed by the architect Bernard
Maybeck and completely restored in the 1960s. The Walt

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 Disney Family Museum, celebrating the life and work of the animation
pioneer, producer, and showman, was opened in 2009 in the Presidio.

Herzog & de Meuron: de Young MuseumThe de Young Museum, San Francisco, designed by Jacques
Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (2005).© Rafael Ramirez Lee/Shutterstock.com

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 Bernard Maybeck: Palace of Fine ArtsPalace of Fine Arts, designed by Bernard Maybeck for the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), San Francisco.PDPhoto.org

Popular culture
A vital part of San Francisco culture is found in its restaurants, bars,
and hotels. To this must be added the popular culture of the ethnic
enclaves—Chinatown, the Italian community of North Beach,
Japantown, the Russian colony along Clement Street, and the
Hispanic Mission District.

San Francisco’s first topflight professional sports team was

the gridiron football 49ers, who began play in 1946. The team became
one of the most successful in National Football League history,
winning five Super Bowl titles. San Francisco became, along with Los
Angeles, one of the first two West Coast cities to be home to a Major
League Baseball franchise when the Giants relocated to San Francisco
from New York City in 1958. San Francisco was briefly home to
the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association, who
played there from 1962 until 1971, when the team relocated across the
bay to Oakland.

In the minds of many, however, San Francisco’s most memorable

contribution to the nation’s culture is its past. It was in the late 1960s
that the city’s Haight-Ashbury District became a haven for the “flower
children” and “hippies” who declared themselves in headlong flight
from the established society and who preached the saving graces of
peace, love, and hallucinogens. However, by the 1970s Haight-
Ashbury had become an ugly and dangerous marketplace for drugs
and vice. More recently, with the rise in real estate prices all over the
city, a gentrification took place in the district, and Haight-Ashbury
now boasts a middle-class population and specialty boutiques, upscale
restaurants, used bookstores, and the ubiquitous coffeehouses.

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 Haight-AshburyRestored Victorian homes in Haight-Ashbury, San
Francisco, California.Urban

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