Unbuilt San Francisco: Panhandle Parkway

In conjunction with the Architecture and the City festival, the San Francisco History Center presents a selection of original architectural renderings and other images which give inklings of a city very different from the one we know today. We encourage you to come view the exhibition Unbuilt San Francisco: Public Spaces on the 6th floor of the Main Library. What's on the 6th Floor will be highlighting selections weekly to tempt you to visit! The collaborative exhibition includes AIA San Francisco, Center for Architecture + Design; Environmental Design Archives at UC Berkeley; California Historical Society; SPUR; and, the San Francisco Public Library.  

   
A Panhandle Freeway had been considered by San Francisco at least as far back as 1948 (at this time you could drive through the Panhandle). In 1952 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a Trafficways Plan for the city, submitted by the State of California. Fourteen years later, a newer mix of Supervisors rejected plans for Panhandle and Golden Gate freeways.

The drawing accompanied Planning director James McCarthy’s recommendations for alternate Panhandle Freeway routes, presented to the City Planning Commission July 16, 1964:

California Division of Highways, District IV
Panhandle Parkway: Recommended Plan as of July 10, 1964*

“A five-block tunnel, about one-half mile long, would then be built west of Baker Street under the Park Panhandle to a point near Clayton Street where an open space for “off” and “on” ramps would be left. This tunnel would be built as a cut-and-cover tunnel where a ditch approximately 170 feet wide (including areas for construction activities) would be dug, the vehicular subway built, and then covered over with a layer of ten feet of soil for replanting of the Park. This tunnel would be mechanically ventilated. 

“The concept of the vehicular subway under the Panhandle was arrived at when an evaluation of the idea of the depressed one-way freeway ditches bordering the Panhandle and under cantilevered structures carrying Fell and Oak Streets (the “F” Alternate) was found to involve the taking of a greater number of large mature trees along each side of the Panhandle than the subway route down the middle.”

California Division of Highways, District IVPanhandle Parkway, 1964. Lithograph.         

William Issel has charted the rise and fall of freeway plans in San Francisco.
“In 1964 Sue Bierman, a resident of the neighborhood adjacent to the Panhandle section of Golden Gate Park, mobilized a district association called the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council to convince the Supervisors to reject the first revised plans for the Panhandle Freeway…. Jean Kortum (whose husband Karl had convinced [San Francisco Chronicle editor] Scott Newhall to support the freeway revolt) organized the Freeway Crisis Committee. Using the slogan “Save Our city,” Jean Kortum brought all the separate neighborhood defense groups together in a citywide coalition. The result was the successful 1966 campaign that stopped the Panhandle and Golden Gate freeways.” Issel explained how a more liberal and environmentally sensitive coalition within the California Democratic Party defeated the plans of Governor Pat Brown, the Division of Highways, and Mayor John F. Shelley.**

California Division of Highways, District IV Panhandle Parkway, 1964. Lithograph. 

     

The lithographs cross-sections illustrate options considered for the Panhandle Parkway; which segments of the full Parkway depicted are unclear.









A few highlighted learning options to delve into for the pros and cons about the Panhandle Freeway

• San Francisco Panhandle Parkway & Crosstown Tunnel: Technical Report / by the California Division of Highways. 
• Facts! and Fancy: The Panhandle Parkway Story / [prepared by the editors of the San Francisco Examiner].
• San Francisco Ephemera Collection - 13 folders under the subject "Freeways - Panhandle"

*The California Division of Highways, District IV - Panhandle Parkway: Recommended Plan as of July 10, 1964 is diazotype with pencil. The plan measures 12 x 85” and you'll need to visit to see the whole plan!

**Quote from "'Land Values, Human Values, and the Preservation of the City's Treasured Appearance': Environmentalism, Politics and the San Francisco Freeway Revolt" by William Issel. Pacific Historical Review. Volume 68, no. 4, November 1999 (accessible in the San Francisco Ephemera Collection: San Francisco. Freeways. Revolt.).