Lombard Street begins at Presidio Boulevard inside The Presidio and runs east through the Cow Hollow neighborhood. For 12 blocks between Broderick Street and Van Ness Avenue, it is a principal arterial road that is co-signed as U.S. Route 101. Lombard Street then continues through the Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill neighborhoods, breaks off at a point becoming Telegraph Hill Boulevard. That leads to Pioneer Park and Coit Tower. Lombard Street starts again at Montgomery Street and finally terminates at The Embarcadero as a collector road. Lombard Street is best known for the one way section 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 world.” In fact, Lombard Street is not even the crookedest street in San Francisco, let alone the world. (Vermont Street between 20th St and 22nd Street near the San Francisco General Hospital is the crookedest street in the city with only seven turns, and is located in a much less picturesque location.) The switchbacks design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry[citation needed] and instituted in 1922, was born out of necessity in order to reduce the hill’s natural 27% grade, which was too steep for most vehicles to climb and a serious hazard to pedestrians used to a more reasonable sixteen-degree incline. The speed limit is a mere 5 mph (8 km/h) on the crooked section, which is about 1/4 mile (400 m) long. SF is great tourist city to visit.
GPR tourist coordinates: 37° 48′ 7.2″ N, 122° 25′ 8.4″ W
Popularity: 4%
Interesting things to do:
- Coit Tower, San Francisco
- Alamo Square, San Francisco, California
- Cable Cars/Museum, San Francisco
- AT&T Park, San Francisco
- The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
- Ferry Building, San Francisco
- San Francisco City Hall, San Francisco
- Wall Street, New York
- Bourbon Street, New Orleans
- University of San Francisco, San Francisco
