Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!

Lombard Street (San Francisco)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Lombard Street, San Francisco)

Lombard Street's famed twists

Lombard Street in San Francisco, California is an east-west thoroughfare that runs from The Presidio, through the Cow Hollow neighborhood (through which Lombard Street is at its busiest and widest and is co-signed as U.S. Highway 101 for the 12 blocks between Broderick Street and Van Ness Avenue), and through the Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill neighborhoods, before terminating at The Embarcadero.

Lombard Street is best known for one block on Russian Hill between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets, in which the roadway has eight sharp turns (or switchbacks) that have earned the street the distinction of being "the crookedest [most winding] street in the United States." (Vermont St. between 20th St and 22nd St near the San Francisco General Hospital disputes that claim) The Powell-Hyde cable car line stops at the top of this block.

The switchback design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and instituted in 1922, was born out of necessity in order to reduce the hill's natural 27° slope which was too steep for most vehicles to climb and a serious hazard to pedestrians used to a more reasonable sixteen-degree incline.

The crooked section of the street is reserved for one-way traffic traveling east (downhill), and is paved with bricks. The section was built in 1923 to accommodate the steepness of the slope.

Cars moving on the Lombard Street

In 1999, a Crooked Street Task Force was created to try to solve traffic problems in the neighborhoods around the winding section of Lombard Street. In 2001, the Task Force decided that it would not be legal to permanently close the block to vehicular traffic. Instead, the Task Force decided to institute a summer parking ban in the area, to bar eastbound traffic on major holidays, and to increase fines for parking in the area. The Task Force also proposed the idea of using minibuses to ferry sightseers to the famous block, although residents debated the efficacy of such a solution, since one of the attractions of touring the area is driving along the twisting section of the street.

Famous past residents of Lombard Street include Rowena Meeks Abdy, an early California painter who worked in the style of Impressionism.

The street, and the difficulty of driving it, is parodied in the Bill Cosby sketch Driving in San Francisco. It is also parodied in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In the fictional city of San Fierro, based on San Francisco, it is named Windy Windy Windy Windy Street.

[edit]