review by Bob Walch

September 2011— 
San Francisco in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City by the Bay (University of California Press, 560 pages, $24.95),

by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration

Coastsiders will find this interesting and informative book about San Francisco and the Bay Area well worth perusing.

The volume contains four core sections: “Gateway to the West,” “The City,” “Around the World in San Francisco” and “Around the Bay.” Each of these general categories is further divided into more concise chapters.

One chapter covers all the islands — Alcatraz, Angel Island, Yerba Buena, Treasure Island and the Farallones — and another looks at the areas of the city from Chinatown, Telegraph Hill and North Beach to South of Market, the Western Addition and Golden Gate Park. If you’d like to know more about the cultural history of San Francisco, there’s the “Social Heritage” chapter that is divided into “High Life and Low Life,” “Before the Footlights,” “Music Makers,” “San Francisco Goes to Church” and “Gentlemen of the Press.”

Maps that identify the locations of key buildings and landmarks in the city’s downtown area also include short histories of each structure. You’ll discover that the Olympic Club is the oldest amateur athletic organization in the country and that the Stockton Street Tunnel from Bush to Sacramento Street was finished in 1914 and cost a mere $656,000.

More fun than just reading a history about San Francisco, this guide contains the kind of minutiae that gives a much better sense of the period, the personality and unique character of our marvelous City by the Bay.

The photos and maps accompanying each section, along with the straightforward prose, make this a history of San Francisco that those of us who visit “The City” on a regular basis will want to read.