Octavia Boulevard

Octavia Boulevard
	Looking south along Octavia Boulevard from Fell Street, where the Central Freeway once dominated the landscape.
Namesake	Octavia Gough
Location	San Francisco, California
South end	US 101 (Central Freeway) in Hayes Valley
North end	Fell Street in Hayes Valley

Looking south along Octavia Street from Jackson Street. This is one of the few blocks in San Francisco still paved in brick.

Octavia Boulevard (designated as Octavia Street north of Hayes Street) is a major street in San Francisco, California, that replaced the Hayes Valley portion of the damaged two-level Central Freeway.^[1] Once a portion of Octavia Street alongside shadowy, fenced-off land beneath the elevated U.S. Route 101 roadway, Octavia Boulevard was redeveloped and redesigned upon the recommendation of a "Central Freeway" planning committee representing a broad array of neighborhoods, including the surrounding Hayes Valley and Western Addition, the Richmond District, Pacific Heights and the Sunset District with representatives appointed by Mayor Willie Brown and the Board of Supervisors and led by the Planning Department of San Francisco. Elements of the San Francisco General Plan were consulted for issues such as urban design, transportation mobility and congestion management, community safety and historic preservation, along with the evaluation of the impacts following the recent removal (1991) of the elevated Embarcadero Freeway and the revitalization of the Embarcadero as a surface boulevard complemented by an extension of the Muni Metro light-rail transit subway.

The committee was charged to come up with alternatives to rebuilding the damaged double-decked freeway in a six-month public planning process. During this time, the planning services of Allan Jacobs, the former Planning Director and Chair of the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design and his business partner and UC Berkeley Landscape Architecture professor Elizabeth MacDonald, whose academic studies of landscaped, multi-lane surface roadways were being compiled for publication as "The Boulevard Book" (2002), were engaged. This lead to a proposal for rebuilding Octavia Boulevard without the freeway structure, which was concurrently reviewed and ultimately deemed "acceptable" in traffic carrying capacity as an alternative to a freeway ramp by Caltrans, which informed the endorsements of the civic design think-tank SPUR, both the Planning and the Parking and Traffic Commissions, and Mayor Willie Brown in his "State of the City" address in October 1997. Opponents to the demolition of the freeway structure north of Market Street, mostly based in the Richmond and Sunset Districts in the western half of San Francisco, responded by circulating petitions to place a ballot initiative (Proposition H) before voters calling to rebuild the freeway rather than to demolish it.

The ballot measure, which did not include references to the progress and design of the replacement surface boulevard, was passed by the voters in November 1997. Members of the Central Freeway planning committee, led by community activists Robin Levitt and Patricia Walkup, regrouped immediately to draft another ballot initiative (Proposition E) calling for the surface boulevard as the preferred alternative to rebuilding the elevated structure north of Market, supported by the urban design benefits of the boulevard and its acceptability per Caltrans' standards in carrying traffic. Proposition E was approved by the San Francisco voters in November 1998, setting the stage for a first and final side-by-side ballot showdown before the voters in November 1999: the pro-boulevard Proposition I against the pro-freeway initiative Proposition J. Proposition I won (54% to 46%) and Proposition J (47% to 53%) failed, and demolition of the elevated portions of the freeway north of Market was completed in 2003.

Octavia Boulevard is four blocks long from Market to Fell Street, containing multiple lanes that separate local and through traffic. On Octavia, homes and businesses located immediately on the street are served by the quieter outer roadways, while lanes leading to and from the rebuilt Central Freeway spur connect faster traffic with the inner roadways. Having replaced a freeway, the boulevard distributes traffic smoothly and evenly throughout the immediate neighborhood, while maintaining the links to the major San Francisco traffic arterials that the old elevated freeway used to connect to directly, including Fell and Oak Streets (which serve the city's western neighborhoods) and Franklin and Gough Streets (which serve northern neighborhoods and the Golden Gate Bridge). A brand new park named "Patricia's Green" (named in honor of Patricia Walkup, who passed away in 2006) was created as part of the boulevard project. It lies on Octavia between Fell and Hayes Street.

North of Hayes Street, Octavia continues as Octavia Street through the Western Addition, Pacific Heights and Marina neighborhoods to Bay Street, at Fort Mason.

Other freeway removal projects in the San Francisco Bay, due to seismic stability (or collapse), include the replacement of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway, and the reuse of the collapsed Cypress Structure's right-of-way in neighboring Oakland.

Origin of name[edit]

The name refers to Octavia Gough, sister of Charles H. Gough. A contractor who carried out the planking and paving of many San Francisco streets, Charles served on the commission to design the layout of streets in the Western Addition, according to an obituary published in the San Francisco Call on July 27, 1895.

Related places nearby[edit]

Parallel to Octavia and immediately east of it is Gough Street.

Octavia is 8 blocks east of Divisadero, which at the time of its naming was the nearest major north–south thoroughfare. "Octavia" is a name which means, "the eighth".

There is an octagon-shaped building (named The Octagon House at 2645 Gough Street, on the northwest corner of Gough and Green streets. As of 2013, it operates as a historic museum, housing colonial-era folk art and documents.

Today, the Academy of Art University owns and operates a building on the street for housing purposes.^[2]

References[edit]

^ "Octavia Boulevard". CNU. 2017-07-27. Retrieved 2021-02-24.
^ "Academy of Art University Campus Map" (PDF). academyart.edu. Academy of Art University. Retrieved 18 April 2017.

External links[edit]

KML file (edit • help)

Template:Attached KML/Octavia Boulevard

KML is not from Wikidata

SFCityscape.com: Octavia Boulevard
Market & Octavia Neighborhood Plan City & County of San Francisco.
Congress for the New Urbanism History of Octavia Boulevard
[1] Points of Interest near Union Street
[2] Origins of San Francisco Street Names

[1] "Octavia Boulevard". CNU. 2017-07-27. Retrieved 2021-02-24.

[2] "Academy of Art University Campus Map" (PDF). academyart.edu. Academy of Art University. Retrieved 18 April 2017.

[1]

[2]

v t e Western Addition, San Francisco
Buildings and business	The Fillmore Nightingale House Painted ladies San Francisco Mint
Geography	Alamo Square Octavia Boulevard Panhandle The Wiggle
Religion	Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption
Transportation	Broadway Tunnel Church station Duboce and Noe station Sunset Tunnel
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