San Francisco Neighborhoods · Marina
Marina
also 1915 Expo groundsSun zonePostcard San Francisco at sea level — bayfront promenades, the Palace of Fine Arts, and a buzzy Chestnut Street where brunch and the bay sit a block apart.
- Flat & walkable
- Bayfront parks & views
- Chestnut St dining
- Marina Green recreation
On the map
Open Marina on the map →The story
The Marina was created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition — a World's Fair celebrating the city's recovery from the 1906 earthquake and the opening of the Panama Canal — much of it built on bay fill and quake rubble. After the fair, the district filled in with Mediterranean-style homes through the 1920s. Its waterfront flats and bay views have made it one of the city's most popular young-professional neighborhoods.
Things most people don’t know
Built for a World's Fair
The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition drew nearly 19 million visitors to a temporary city of palaces here. When it closed, the grounds became the Marina.
The Palace of Fine Arts survived
The domed Palace of Fine Arts is the Expo's only structure left standing. Too beloved to demolish, it was rebuilt in permanent concrete in the 1960s.
Hardest hit in 1989
Because much of the Marina sits on loose bay fill, the soil liquefied in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake — making it the city's most damaged neighborhood and a key reason it shows up on seismic maps today.
A musical seawall
At the tip of the Marina jetty sits the Wave Organ — a sculpture of pipes set into the breakwater that the tides play, built by the Exploratorium in 1986.
Chestnut Street, since the '20s
Chestnut Street has been the Marina's main drag for a century — today a tight run of cafés, fitness studios, and shops that defines the neighborhood's social scene.
Eating and drinking
Getting around and getting care
Transit. No Muni Metro here — it's a bus neighborhood. The 30 Stockton runs down Chestnut St to downtown and Chinatown, with the 22 Fillmore, 28 19th Ave, and 43 Masonic linking the rest of the city. Lombard St carries Golden Gate Transit toward Marin.
Nearest hospital. CPMC Van Ness Campus, 1101 Van Ness Ave (about 2 mi)
Thinking about Marina?
Send me an address and I will come back with its sun, wind and fog, what is under it, and what has closed on the block.