Auto Row on Van Ness

Unfinished History

Automobiles poured into San Francisco and California during the first decades of the 20th century. In 1915, Ford already had a factory at 21st and Harrison in the Mission making Model-T’s, and by the mid-1920s, the new car business was fully ensconced along Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco:

Van Ness Avenue south at Eddy Street, with Auto Row well established in this 1929 photo.

Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library, courtesy Charles Ruiz collection

Chevrolet dealer at Van Ness and Sacramento, 1933.

Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Rambler dealer, Van Ness Avenue, August 1964.

Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Interior of Don Lee Cadillac showroom (now AMC Theaters).

Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Don Lee Cadillac dealership, Van Ness and O'Farrell, 1928.

Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Van Ness and Sacramento, 1930

Photo: Private Collection, San Francisco, CA

Van Ness Avenue south at California Street, with an H-streetcar making its way through "auto row" in 1936.

Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library, courtesy Charles Ruiz collection

Interesting to recall that while 30,000 citizens were mobilized to stop freeway building in San Francisco (the very same elevated, pedestrian-free streets McClintock had come to endorse as an industry flack) thousands more, mostly African American and white youth, staged a vigorous civil rights campaign along auto row, demanding that blacks be given equal treatment in hiring by auto dealers, especially Don Lee’s Cadillac dealership.

Crowd cheering civil rights employment settlement with auto dealers, 1964.

Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library