Is there a future for S.F.’s dead mall on Market? An 1800s ballpark gives us hope
By Peter Hartlaub,Culture CriticJan 10, 2026
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1896: Central Park on Market Street in San Francisco, the city’s first big ballpark, was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. This angle is looking down Eighth Street.Courtesy Open SF History
A ballpark on Eighth and Market streets in San Francisco?
It was already a well-used landmark on Feb. 11, 1906, when a record baseball crowd of 25,000 funneled slowly into Central Park for a charity all-star game, making the city’s main thoroughfare look like Oracle Park before a postseason game.
“Such a crowd it was!” the Chronicle reported the next day. “There has never been such a one at any ball game held in San Francisco. For two hours they streamed into the grounds, until it seemed as though baseball would be impossible.”
A month later, the stadium and entire block were gone — incinerated by the April 18, 1906, earthquake and fire. Baseball moved to the Mission District, then Hunters Point, then China Basin. And Market Street moved on. A federal court building and two theaters take up most of the Central Park footprint now. There’s barely room for a game of catch.
More than a century later and a few blocks away, San Francisco Centre is going through a similar cataclysmic moment. A slower death, for sure, but not by much. Just 20 years ago, the mall was christened during a heralded event that included a Bloomingdales opening, aerial dancers and an appearance by one of the good Kennedys. I ran into the actual Jonas Brothers there once.
Now most of the remaining businesses inside the massive seven-story property are either preparing to vacate or being sued to leave.
I walk through the mall frequently, eating weekly at one of the last food court survivors until it closed, then strolling the mostly empty hall just to marvel at the cavernous quiet. But as dismal as the scene has grown, I’ve never felt depressed. The future of this block on Market between Fifth and Fourth streets is arguably the biggest quagmire in the fight to resurrect a downtown still reeling from the pandemic office space exodus. Yet all I see is possibility.
There’s no pundit I trust more than history. And when I walk this city block, I don’t see extinction. My only worry is that we get so deep into the doom-and-gloom mindset, that we squander an opportunity to reveal what’s next.
Central Park, one of the city’s first great Market Street developments, opened on Thanksgiving Day 1884. The “Oaklands” beat a team of East Coast all-stars 11-2 in a five inning game. There were also races, a rope-climbing contest and a hot air balloon.
The venue, downtown’s largest seated gathering space by a factor of 10, quickly became the MVP of Market. It was the first home of the San Francisco Seals professional baseball team. And it was a flexible space; orator and presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in 1897 appeared in front of a crowd of 40,000 that gathered on the field, stands and building supports.
The earthquake ended that. While the block was used to serve hot meals to the homeless, a new ballpark was quickly built in the Mission District.
But Market Street was not barren for long. Streetcars returned within weeks, and the American Theatre, an under-construction 1,400-seat venue at Market and Montgomery, was welcoming guests to opera by early 1907. “Built of steel and reinforced concrete,” a Chronicle advertisement read. “Safe and absolutely fireproof.”
By the time the cinema age arrived on Market Street in 1915, when the Alcazar screened D.W. Griffith’s epic “The Birth of a Nation,” the block’s reinvention was taking shape. A half dozen Market Street movie theaters opened within four blocks of Central Park, including the State Theater (1920), Warfield and Golden Gate (1922), Orpheum (1926) and the grand Fox Theatre (1929). Neon signs went up, and crowds followed. By the 1940s, downtown’s cinema age was at its peak.
The rise of smaller neighborhood theaters in the second half of the century put most of the Market Street cinemas out of business. (The last closed in 2001 or 2013, depending on whether we’re counting pornography houses.)
But a new era arrived: Music promoter Bill Graham and theater producer Carole Shorenstein Hays turned some of the old theaters into live music and theater venues, while the empty Emporium building at Fifth and Market was resurrected as a mall anchored by Nordstrom and Bloomingdales.
The surprise success of the former broke an invisible line between the classes, and proved the city’s best art, commerce and recreation could thrive South of Market. Nordstrom walked so the Metreon, Museum of Modern Art, Yerba Buena Gardens and Salesforce Park could run.
And now, we think it’s all finished? Why? Because the rules of retail and office work have changed? Because no one wants to go to a windowless indoor mall in one of the most beautiful cities in the world?
Or is this just another Central Park? A big disaster, followed by fresh opportunity.
The mall should never return. City leaders should veto any kind of Hellfire Club setup that excludes a large percentage of Bay Area residents because of cost or exclusivity. From there, history gives us permission to dream big.
The land is still ultra-accessible to BART and Muni, just waiting to bring crowds to whatever great idea wins the day. It’s surrounded by parks, museums, new housing plans, historic buildings and potential.
The London Breed-backed wild-sounding pitch for a soccer stadium? More unexpected things have happened in the city. Legoland? Local architect Mark Hogan’s plan is wonderful to imagine.
Mostly, I have faith. San Francisco has been through this before. The best ideas are usually the ones that come by surprise. And the only wrong answer is “there’s no hope.”
Jan 10, 2026
Culture Critic
Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s culture critic and co-founder of Total SF. The Bay Area native, a former Chronicle paperboy, has worked at The Chronicle since 2000. He covers Bay Area culture, co-hosts the Total SF podcast and writes the archive-based Our SF local history column. Hartlaub and columnist Heather Knight co-created the Total SF podcast and event series, engaging with locals to explore and find new ways to celebrate San Francisco and the Bay Area.
