The Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC), one of the city's oldest and most persistent neighborhood groups, dates its origins to the initial struggles against the proposed Panhandle-Golden Gate Park freeway, which was to extend the central freeway up the Oak/Fell corridor, slice 60% of the Panhandle for the roadway, and tunnel under the north edge of Golden Gate Park before turning onto today's Park Presidio towards the Golden Gate Bridge. At that time the freeway reigned supreme in California, but San Francisco harbored the seeds of an incipient revolt which ultimately saved several neighborhoods from the wrecking ball and also put up the first serious opposition to the post-WWII consensus on automobiles, freeways, and suburbanization.Įarly plan for 8-lane freeway to cut under Russian Hill on its way from the Embarcadero to the Golden Gate Bridge In the 1950s, the California Division of Highways had a plan to extend freeways across San Francisco. 1965, at the Broadway end of the Embarcadero Freeway. Video: courtesy Prelinger Archives, Lost Landscapes of San FranciscoĬonstruction of the Embarcadero Freeway stopped here at Broadway due to popular anger.įreeway protestors walk along Embarcadero, old Embarcadero Freeway and Ferry Building in background, c. New ramps to Washington and Clay Streets from the Embarcadero Freeway, August 15, 1965.Ĭharles Cushman Collection: Indiana University Archives (P14851)ġ957 entry to the Embarcadero Freeway, before it was finished, a harrowing ride! Malvina Reynolds serenading protesters defending the Panhandle from freeway plans in 1966. Let's put them to work planting new trees to grow, The men on the highways need those jobs, we know, Now they're making it a concrete desert again,įrom the freeway misery. We can hear his spirit move in the sandy ground, Old John MacLaren won't take this lying down, The trees that stood for a thousand years,įrom the freeway misery. The Bay and the Ferry Building are out of sight, That octopus grows like a science-fiction blight, On the big bulldozers and tanks of cement,įrom the freeway misery. Its parents are frightened, they wish it would go away,īut the taxes keep coming, they have to be spent Who knows how the monster started to grow that way, Gets red tape to eat, gasoline taxes to drink.Īnd it grows by day and it grows by night,įrom the freeway misery. There's a cement octopus sits in Sacramento, I think. Malvina Reynolds singing "Cement Octopus," her anti-freeway anthem from 1964 (lyrics below). Malvina Reynolds sings her anti-freeway ballad at the rally to save the Panhandle in Golden Gate Park. Save the Panhandle Park rally in Golden Gate Park, May 17, 1964. Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Libraryįront page SF Examiner coverage of failed protest against I-280 route. Picketers protesting against the I-280 Freeway route cutting off the east side of Potrero Hill marching at City Hall, April 18, 1961. Tracking the revolt’s chronological progression while also relating it to a larger historical context and the emphasis on mass transit that resulted, the article moves into the 21st century to show the shift in urban planning priorities. This off-and-on informal conflict of ideas, nicknamed the “Freeway Revolt,” pitted a variety of political, mercantile, and ideological interests against each other with the future of the city's neighborhoods and livability at stake. Photo: San Francisco Chronicle Beginning in the late 1950s until 1966, the city of San Francisco underwent a polarizing internal debate over a series of proposed alterations to its transportation infrastructure.
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