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History of San Francisco Place Names
- martinoma 14y agoThis is awesome. It would be cool to see neighborhood names, too, when they aren't linked directly to a street
- PaulHoule 14y agoneighborhoods are actually easier than streets because you can find neighborhood polygons in many databases... this must have involved linking up Wikipedia with a real GIS database like Open Street Maps. I'd love to hear more about how it was done!
- veltman 14y agoYeah, there are lots of categories like neighborhood names that have their own interesting stories but I wasn't sure how to display. Definitely lots of room for improvement, there are also plenty of gaps in the streets, I'll hopefully be able to fill some of those in in the coming weeks.
- chadlpowell 14y agosuper cool!
- smoyer 14y agoBookmarked! I'm going to use this when I'm cruising around the city next time (perhaps OracleWorld/JavaOne).
- veltman 14y agoFYI, if you view it on your phone, you should be able to use the link in the lower-right corner to zoom to your current location!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- PaulHoule 14y agoSweet! How did you reconcile Wikipedia concepts with the line geography of streets?
- maxerickson 14y agoIt looks like it was a manual process: https://twitter.com/veltman/status/328613691392143360 https://twitter.com/veltman/status/328613691392143360
- saltzman 14y agodude this kicks so much ass.
- veltman 14y agoHey guys, I made this map. Happy to answer any questions about how it was done, I'm going to do a detailed writeup when I have a chance. The short version is: no Wikipedia link-up, it's all manual research from archives, books, and sites (including Wikipedia). There are lots of Wikipedia links included but that's just for people who want more detail than I included in the descriptions. I parsed the street/polygon geometry from OSM and tied it together with Leaflet and then added lots of nitpicky extra design choices in JS.
- hkmurakami 14y agoWow! I take it that history of SF is a personal interest of yours?
- veltman 14y agoWell, I'm interested in history generally, but I'm not sure I was an SF history obsessive going into this project. I was just interested in the fact that I was surrounded by streets that were clearly all named after people and I had no idea who they were. I thought a map like this would be a cool way to see those same streets I walk/drive down all the time a little differently.
- hkmurakami 14y agoI remember reading that Palo Alto streets (or maybe some subsection of them) are named after Authors. I've always been curious about this, but never looked into researching it further. Maybe I'll give it a shot now :)
- victoro 14y agoYes. A good number of streets are named after famous authors. I used to live on on Poe St. and remember seeing Byron, Seneca, Kipling, and Homer (and others I can't remember). A subsection of streets close to Stanford is also named after famous colleges. In general, I think its a good strategy for a University town to surround citizens with subtle reminders of famous/successful examples of education and the educated.
- jcl 14y agoVery nice. I've been curious about the origin of Gough Street and was quite amused by the explanation: Charles H. Gough - A local milkman who served on the 1855 committee tasked with naming the streets of the Western Addition. He named Gough Street after himself and Octavia Street after his sister, and may have named Steiner Street after a friend.
- supersillyus 14y agoAccording to Last Call by Daniel Okrent, Gough St was named after famed temperance orator John Bartholomew Gough. I'd assumed that was true until I saw this site. Wikipedia has support for both theories, but it looks like Charles H was the real namesake.
- dangrover 14y agoAlso amusing: Main St. was named after Charles Main.
- prawn 14y agoBeen planning on making an app that does this based on current location. The government in South Australia lists source information like this along with almost every named street, suburb, etc. Should be standard worldwide IMO.
- asveikau 14y agoOne item of curiosity: We all know who recognizable figures such as Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and MLK Jr. are. When did they decide to name streets after them?
- veltman 14y agoBeen planning to add this, dates for when the street got its current name (when available). Coming soon!
- jesusabdullah 14y agoEqual representation for O-Town!! What's the history of T-graph? Peralta? San Parblo? I bet MLK (nee Grove) has some interesting history. (I assume T-graph followed a telegraph route between Oakland and Berkeley. I more or less know where West MacArf got its name.)
- enf 14y agoMacArthur is for General Douglas MacArthur. It was cobbled together from a bunch of existing streets to provide a through route to the Bay Bridge when the bridge was new. San Pablo is the road to the town of San Pablo. Peralta is from Don Luís María Peralta, owner of Rancho San Antonio.
- veltman 14y agoI would imagine there's a lot of overlap in the names! Plenty of the SF streets are for figures of general California/Bay Area history, not purely local figures. There are also a bunch of folks like Jack London and Ralph Kirkham who had some notoriety in both cities.
- stormbrew 14y agoI've always wondered if Howard Beale in the film Network was named after the intersection of those streets in SF. Alas, this does not answer that question.
- brini 14y agoThanks for this. I've heard that some of the alleys south of Market got their names from the proprietors of brothels in that area, such as Minna, Natoma, Tehama, Clementina. Can anyone debunk/confirm this?