North Beach National Register District Stalled – San Francisco Heritage
By Woody LaBounty
Work first began on identifying and designating a North Beach historic district in the early 1980s. Some of the most accomplished architectural historians in San Francisco have put in hours on the project over 40 years, including Michael Corbett and the late Anne Bloomfield. They knew that the neighborhood between Telegraph and Russian hills along the spine of Columbus Avenue was particularly special. Every San Franciscan and every visitor knows.
Not only does North Beach possess stylistic uniformity and an intact architectural integrity dating from just after San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake and fire, but its social and ethnic associations are highly significant: Italian-American and Chinese-American history, Bohemian artists, Beat writers, early LGBTQIA+ spaces.
After city adoption of a highly praised 269-page North Beach Historic Context Statement in 2022, and with funding from the Northeast San Francisco Conservancy, architectural historian Katherine Petrin (who is also a board member of San Francisco Heritage) completed the long-anticipated historic district nomination in 2024. It was submitted in June to the California Office of Historic Preservation for review. After consideration and possible recommendation by the State Historical Resources Commission (SHRC), which meets quarterly, the nomination’s ultimate arbiter would be the Keeper of the National Register in Washington, D.C.
The North Beach National Register Historic District was included on the SHRC agenda for its February 7, 2025 meeting. On January 27, the last day possible to pull the item, new San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie requested it be removed to allow more time for his office to conduct “due diligence.”
The District
The National Register nomination identifies 631 historic-district contributors (625 buildings, 1 site, and 5 objects) and 90 non-contributing (that is, not determined historic) sites and structures in a roughly 20-block district bounded by Chestnut Street on the north, Mason Street on the west, Sansome Street on the east, and Washington Street on the south. Sites along Columbus Avenue, Broadway, and Washington Square are major areas of focus.
Some structures in the district already possess some type of individual historic designation, including City Lights bookstore (261 Columbus Avenue), the Paper Doll bar/restaurant building (524 Union Street), Washington Square, and St. Francis of Assisi Church (624 Vallejo Street).
Rapidly reconstructed after the 1906 earthquake and fire, the neighborhood was substantially rebuilt out by 1915 and most of the structures in the historic district, many in simple Classical Revival style, date from this decade. The nomination notes:
“Architecture is the strongest and most inclusive and unifying theme of the North Beach historic district. Possessing an overall continuity the neighborhood’s architecture has a distinctive and cohesive vocabulary based on similarity of height, scale, proportion, materials, and ornamentation.”
The North Beach district is a dense urban landscape with flats, houses, storefronts, and residential hotels. Many of the buildings are mixed-use, with housing over restaurants, cafés, bars, and clubs. Broadway’s entertainment zone has old pool and dance halls, theaters, and music venues.
The nomination notes the primary ethnic association of the neighborhood in the early 20th century, one that is still evident in character today: “North Beach, also called Little Italy, was one of the largest and most important populations of immigrant Italians in the United States.”
North Beach was the center of Italian-American life. In addition to residents, building owners, and business owners, the architects of North Beach’s post-quake building boom were also primarily Italians, including Paul F. DeMartini (30 buildings in the proposed district), Louis Mastropasqua (28 buildings), John Anton Porporato (38 buildings), and Paul J. Capurro (15 buildings in the district in which he was born and raised).
Italian residential dominance in North Beach began to ebb in the years after World War II. By 1977, 40% of North Beach’s population was ethnically Chinese. By the early 1990s, that percentage rose to two-thirds of neighborhood residents. Today, the majority of North Beach properties are owned by Chinese-Americans and many buildings in the proposed historic district have strong associations with Chinese businesses and culture.
Building at 916 Kearny Street in 1934. The building was home of the Opus One Night Club, which was associated with LGBTQ night life from 1952 to 1958. Credit: OPENSFHISTORY/WNP14.2415
The mid-century decades saw a flowering of bohemian and LGBTQ subcultural life in North Beach, although the seeds of both pre-date World War II. From the 1940s to the early 1960s, the neighborhood was the center of artistic and gay life in San Francisco.
Visitors from around the world still visit North Beach to walk the alleys, drink in the cafes, and browse the bookshelves associated with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Laurence Ferlinghetti, and other Beats. Guided by the excellent LGBTQ Context Statement (2015) by Shayne Watson and Donna Graves, the North Beach nomination highlights important but less widely known gay and lesbian nightclubs once at the Sentinel (916 Kearny) and Tosca Cafe (242 Columbus) buildings, in Adler Place, and on Broadway.
In the words of Michael Corbett, author of the North Beach Context Statement upon which the historic district was based, and an author of multiple National Register nominations himself, “The North Beach Historic District is a symbol of San Francisco that fully deserves listing on the National Register of Historic Places.”
Then he goes further, calling the National Register only a potential first step: “The neighborhood would qualify as a National Historic Landmark and should be considered as a World Heritage Site as well.”
The Mayor’s Request
The California Office of Historic Preservation reviewed the 332-page document, and with no substantial changes requested, scheduled the nomination’s review by the State Historical Resources Commission at its quarterly meeting on February 7, 2025. Notifications and invitations to comment were sent to the more than 700 property owners in the proposed district in November. The San Francisco Planning Department and the city’s Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) were also invited to review and comment.
All parties were given a deadline to weigh in by January 31, 2025. San Francisco Heritage submitted a letter of strong recommendation in early December 2024.
On January 15, 2025, the HPC unanimously passed a resolution with inclusion of recommended edits from the Planning Department to the state. The department’s comments primarily focused on adding information and photographs to assist the city with any future planning and preservation efforts in the neighborhood. The HPC and the Planning Department agreed that the North Beach Historic District is locally significant under National Register Criterion A (Events) and C (Design/Construction).
New District 3 supervisor Danny Sauter personally appeared at the Historic Preservation Commission meeting and requested that more time be given to review the nomination before its consideration by the State Historical Resources Commission.
Mayor Daniel Lurie followed up with a January 27, 2025 letter requesting the SHRC delay action on the nomination, explaining that his office was working with supervisor Sauter to “understand the scope and significance” and the “potential impacts and benefits” of a National Register historic district.
National Register designation does not impart particularly strong protections. Unlike with properties designated as local landmarks or contributors to a local conservation district, application for alterations or demolition on National Register sites is the same process as with any undesignated San Francisco property.
National Register sites are automatically added to the California Register of Historic Resources. Properties listed in either register are considered historic resources under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and so do require special attention from the Planning Department to evaluate potential impacts when a permit or project is filed.
While a National Register listing would therefore seem to add a level of bureaucracy and potential delay to a project sponsor or property owner, it actually does the opposite.
For older buildings without a historic resource determination, Planning staff are tasked with doing the CEQA research and evaluation (owners often hire consultants to expedite the work). This sometimes- lengthy and potentially expensive step is eliminated when a property has already been listed or found not to be a historic resource.
Recent housing production laws meant to streamline approvals exclude demolition of historic resources. This is the greatest “impact” of the National Register designation, and seems to be the main point of contention from opponents of the district. State senator Scott Wiener went as far as to claim in a KQED article that the nomination “is abusive and is designed to stop new housing.”
But because demolition of properties with long-time renters or rent- controlled units is also barred in new housing-production programs, very few of the buildings in the North Beach historic district would be able to apply for streamlining anyway.
The historic district designation actually provides its own version of streamlining of the planning process by identifying 90 non- contributing sites and saving the work of historic resource evaluations for the contributing properties.
And there are other benefits of historic designation, including possibly being the difference-maker in getting new and affordable housing constructed.
Owners of historically designated properties are eligible for Mills Act contracts with the city to reduce property taxes for maintenance and rehabilitation work. Owners of both commercial and residential properties on the National (and therefore California) Register are able to apply for a 20-25% tax credit from the state for rehabilitation. In some cases they can combine that with a federal tax credit. Preservation tax credits have been key to constructing affordable housing in historic buildings in California and across the United States.
So, while North Beach is already the city’s most densely populated neighborhood, designation of a North Beach National Register Historic District could provide new tools and expedited guidance to add even more housing.
Moving Forward
Both the mayor and the District 3 supervisor have recognized the historical importance of North Beach. The mayor wrote in his letter to the SHRC that “Clearly, North Beach is a treasured neighborhood with obvious historic importance and many historic properties that deserve recognition and protection.”
Both men are less than a month in their respective offices with varied and intense challenges before them. While the decision on a National Register designation is not within their authority to grant or deny, it is understandable that they desire more time to learn what a historic district means.
San Francisco Heritage has requested meetings with both to assist in their due diligence. Representatives from the mayor’s office have quickly responded and a meeting will soon be scheduled.
With the expertise of the city attorney and Planning Department’s preservation staff, the mayor and supervisor shouldn’t need long to get a grasp of the subject.
The more concerning implication of a delay is that rather than clarifying the details of National Register nomination for property owners, it will be used to intensify and rally political opposition against any kind of historic designation.
In recent years, preservation has been increasingly used in California as a stand-in villain against housing production. Even when no development project or plan is in the works (or likely to be), any sort of designation is portrayed as anti-housing.
Senator Wiener’s incendiary comment claiming “abuse” is typical recent rhetoric applied to a very rigorous process that has been in place for decades, makes use of highly trained historians and architectural experts, includes multiple steps for public comment, and in the end provides very little in the way of protection to a very small subset of properties.
Historic designation is one of the only demolition exclusions in new streamlining housing bills. Historic neighborhoods and communities suddenly have to formally prove they qualify. Now, as they follow the legal process to do so, they are accused of abuse and “weaponizing” the system. Preservationists are always for more housing and economically vibrant neighborhoods. We are thrilled by adaptive-reuse projects that put housing into historic buildings. We know that historic landscapes and historic districts (like North Beach’s neighboring Jackson Square) are highly desirable to home-seekers, businesses, and visitors.
Preservation tax credits are often what make affordable housing projects “pencil out.”
Rather than seeing historic preservation as an obstruction to housing, elected officials should lean into using it as the versatile and powerful tool it is. More incentives to protect and rehabilitate special places can mean more housing, more investment in the city, more robust cultural activity, and, importantly in San Francisco, more tourism.
SF Heritage will stay closely involved in this effort and push for re- calendaring of the North Beach National Register Historic District on the State Historical Resources Commission’s May 2025 meeting.
We can have new housing and historic places. But if we as a society are going to re-argue the utility and value of preservation, North Beach is a great place to start.
If it isn’t a historic district, what is?
