Photo: John Manoogian III, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A charming and immaculately manicured Pacific Heights park with great vistas over the Bay. It has tennis courts and a playground, and is a pretty good place for a picnic, or even just a rest if you've just scaled the hill.
Alta Plaza Park is a 12.9-acre (5.2 ha) public park in San Francisco, California and caps the top of the western edge of Pacific Heights. It falls under the jurisdiction of the city's Supervisorial District 2. The park is served by several San Francisco Municipal Railway bus lines. It gets its name from the eponymous spring.
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This house was built in 1853 and as such it is one of the city's oldest residences. A ferry-boat captain known as Captain Leale bought the house three decades later and remodeled it in the popular "Italianate" style.
The Art Deco/Neo-Classical Clay Theater was built in 1910 and is one of the oldest movie theaters in the city. It specializes in indie and international films. It's a small little theater, with smallish seats and an even smaller screen; but its got a cozy atmosphere, its popcorn comes laden with butter, and overall it's a great place to catch an art house film. The Clay was closed in 2020, shortly before COVID, but the local community rallied to preserve the theater, with it being designated as a city landmark in 2022. As of 2026, the theater has not yet reopened, but an investor has purchased the building with the intention to reopen it.
On Friday, October 7, 1955, the "Six Gallery reading" took place here. It was a seminal moment in the Beat Generation movement and attracted such poets and writers as Alan Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac. The gallery has since closed but there is a plaque at the site where this event took place.
If you climb these steps you can get a breathtaking view of the Palace of Fine Arts, the Marina, and the Bay. The Steps are known locally as the "San Francisco Stair Master"... and with good reason!
Features an eclectic collection of prints, sculpture, and jewelry from Alaskan and Canadian Inuit artists. The artwork sold here is an interpretation of Arctic life and culture.
This temple was built in 1905 by architect Joseph Leonard. Architecturally the building reflects the Vedantic philosophy that all roads lead to one God; hence the building has a mix of architectural styles like Edwardian, Moorish, Queen Anne, Colonial, and Oriental among others. It has five different towers on the top including a Russian-style onion dome and a European-style castle turret. The extraordinary temple was the first Hindu temple built in the West.