San Francisco Neighborhoods · Northern Waterfront

Northern Waterfront

also Northeast WaterfrontSun zone

The sunny, bay-facing foot of Telegraph Hill — old cargo piers reborn as a science museum and a cruise terminal, with the F-line streetcar rolling down the Embarcadero out front.

$2.15M
Median condo / TIC 14 sold
$1,330
Per square foot
14
Days to sell median
15
Homes sold 2026

On the map

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The story

The name is plain geography: this is the northern stretch of San Francisco's port waterfront — the flat, bay-facing strip along the Embarcadero from Washington Street, past the foot of Telegraph Hill, to the edge of Fisherman's Wharf. Most of it is made land. In Gold Rush days the bay reached the foot of Telegraph Hill, and wharves, rubble and rock quarried from the hill pushed the shoreline east. From the late 1870s a state-built seawall, and later finger piers and the State Belt Railroad, made it a working port of warehouses and cargo sheds, with the city's wholesale produce market crowded around Washington and Davis streets. When shipping moved to Oakland's container terminals in the 1960s and '70s the piers emptied; the Golden Gateway redevelopment replaced the produce district, and the 1991 demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the shoreline. Today old brick warehouses hold offices, newer condos and apartments fill the blocks below the hill, and the piers host a science museum and a cruise terminal.

Things most people don’t know

The freeway that came down

The double-deck Embarcadero Freeway ended at Broadway, where the city's freeway revolt stopped its planned run toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, it was torn down in 1991.

A museum on the piers

The Exploratorium, founded in 1969 by physicist Frank Oppenheimer at the Palace of Fine Arts, moved to Pier 15 at the foot of Green Street in 2013.

Blue-jeans headquarters

Levi's Plaza was built in the early 1980s at the foot of Telegraph Hill as Levi Strauss & Co.'s headquarters; its plaza and park were designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.

Once the produce market

Into the early 1960s the blocks around Washington, Front and Davis streets were the city's wholesale produce market. After it moved to its present site on Jerrold Avenue in 1963, the Golden Gateway apartments, townhouses and Sydney G. Walton Square took its place.

Cruise ships at the door

The James R. Herman Cruise Terminal opened at Pier 27 in 2014, named for longtime longshore union leader Jimmy Herman.

Eating and drinking near Northern Waterfront

Northern Waterfront is primarily residential — these sit in the Financial District, North Beach, Fisherman's Wharf.

Restaurants

Bars

Getting around and getting care

Transit. The F-Market & Wharves historic streetcar runs the length of the neighborhood on the Embarcadero, with stops from Washington St up to Sansome St on its way to Fisherman's Wharf. The 1 California and the 12 stop a block south on Clay St, and the 12 also runs on Sansome St and Broadway just to the west. Embarcadero BART and Muni Metro station and the Ferry Building's ferry terminal are just to the south.

Nearest hospital. Chinese Hospital, 845 Jackson St (about 0.6 mi)

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