If you love friendly urban neighborhoods with fabulous views and great restaurants, bars, cafes and nightclubs, then our San Francisco North Beach hotel in California is the vacation spot for you. While staying in the luxurious accommodations of the Washington Square Inn, you will experience North Beach's lively past including Little Italy and the Barbary Coast.
North Beach has the easygoing feeling of a village with all the amenities of an exciting big city. Generally viewed as one of the country's top inner-city neighborhoods, North Beach is referred to as the heart and soul of San Francisco, CA. Named for a beach that became landfill in the 1800s, North Beach is nestled in an urban valley between Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill.
This exciting neighborhood has it all: romantic cable cars, landmark buildings, fantastic bay and city views, an outstanding selection of restaurants, cafes, clubs and saloons with live music.
10/03/07 VOTED TOP TEN NEIGHBORHOOD IN THE NATION-San Francisco - -- San Francisco's North Beach has been celebrated
through the years by poets and novelists. Now, add the American Planning
Association to the chorus.
The 41,000-member professional organization on Tuesday proclaimed the
low-slung district between Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf to be one of 10 Great
Neighborhoods in America. The planners praise the physical character of the
place - Columbus Avenue slicing past Washington Square below the spires of SS
Peter and Paul Church, for instance - as well as the community activism that has
helped to preserve the local retail scene.
But if the honor makes good press, it didn't exactly catch the district's
regulars by surprise.
"North Beach has vitality. It's fun. Our employees and clients love coming
here, and that speaks volumes," said Hans Baldauf of BCV Architects, which has
50 staffers jammed into a pair of offices near Washington Square. "We keep
outgrowing our space, but we don't want to leave the neighborhood."
Once a largely Italian enclave focused on the fisheries and docks of the bay,
North Beach today is known equally well for such cultural landmarks as City
Lights Bookstore. Grant Avenue has designer clothing boutiques. There's Chinese
lettering on the marquee of North East Medical Services, three doors down
Stockton Street from Palermo Delicatessen.
This social mix caught the eye of distant planners every bit as much as the
aged terrain of three- and four-story buildings.
"One thing that jumps out about North Beach is that it's a vibrant
neighborhood within the whole context of the city," said Paul Farmer, executive
director of the association. "You've also got a great diversity of ownership and
architectural styles because there are so many buildings. It's a more complex
urbanism."
Physically, North Beach hasn't changed much from 1940, when the Works
Progress Administration's guide to San Francisco described Columbus Avenue as a
"traffic-crowded artery, where stucco-framed commercial buildings with their
awnings and signboards string in long rows." It portrayed the eastern
residential streets as "endless blocks of weathered frame flats, staggered -
steplike - one above another."
These days, though, you're more likely to find Asian immigrants doing tai chi
in Washington Square than Italian men sitting on benches smoking cigars. The
Italian-themed coffeehouses and restaurants are aimed at tourists and regional
diners more than people who live or work nearby.
Still, "North Beach has shown a real ability to adapt itself to different
generations, maintaining a sense of authenticity," said Boris Dramov, a
principal at Roma Design Group.
For 20 years, Dramov's firm has been based in the second floor of a building
that stretches from Columbus to Grant. And when Dramov moved to San Francisco in
the 1960s, his first perch was an apartment on nearby Telegraph Hill.
"There's still a mix of uses, layers of activity," Dramov said. "North Beach
has evolved, but it's still exceptional."
To some San Franciscans, of course, North Beach can be just another
neighborhood where it's hard to find parking.
Case in point: Jake Nicol and Alex Sanchez, two native San Franciscans in
their 20s. On Tuesday, they had a prime table across from Washington Square at
Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store Cafe. When asked about the lure of North Beach,
they shrugged.
"You know, I never really came here growing up," Sanchez said. "It seemed too
touristy. I coupled it with Fisherman's Wharf and Chinatown."
Nicol nodded in agreement. These days, though, he's employed at a social
service agency that provides assistance primarily to the people of Italian
descent who remain in the area.
"Working here, the difference is night and day. It's a completely different
neighborhood," Nicol said. "There really is a community."
Other neighborhoods singled out by the association include Park Slope in
Brooklyn, San Diego's Hillcrest district and the Pike Place Market neighborhood
in Seattle.
