The hub of San Francisco's shopping district is a well-manicured, 2.6 acre plot planted with palms, Irish yews, boxwood, and bright flowers.
Like Paris' Place Vendome, Union Square has a towering, statue-topped shaft at its center and is surrounded by smart stores and fine hotels. It also has something of the same aura of elegance.
Traffic flow on the streets bordering the Square -- Geary, Powell, Post, and Stockton -- bustles. San Francisco's retail core consistently ranks among the top five in the nation in total sales volume.
Standing at the hub it's easy to see why. The square is framed by famous fashion houses offering a wide assortment of luxuries. One will find the most upscale department stores, featuring prêt-a-porter and couture fashions from world-renowned international and American designers, and specialty stores known for their impeccable traditional European footwear, luggage, and other leather goods. Here, connoisseurs peruse the finest jewelry houses' exquisite selections. Traditional menswear designers display their stately goods against dark, polished interiors of wood and leather. More adventurous dressers can fulfill their desires in the brightly-colored, upbeat stores of daring Italian designers. Even Francophiles will feel at home, finding everything from French scarves and haute-couture to linens and gifts.
Union Square's slightly convex surface covers a four-story deep cavity like an imposing pot lid. In 1941 the park was carefully dismantled and earthmovers began burrowing a hole big enough to accommodate more than 1,000 automobiles. The facility was the first of its kind. As many as 2,700 cars a day sweep down its ramps.
The traffic topside is eclectic. Shoppers, strollers, brown baggers, sunbathers, orators, trysters, street entertainers, and pigeons use the grassy quad as a shortcut, soapbox, solarium, sidewalk café, stage, front porch, and bird refuge.
There are 40 hotels in all categories within three blocks of the square. Flower stands - a San Francisco institution as old as the cable cars - daub almost every corner.
Prior to the Gold Rush of 1849, Union Square was a sandy hillock. A considerable stream coursed down a deep ravine on its west flank where the cable cars now clang.
A California Registered State Landmark plaque at the park's Geary-Powell entrance records that Union Square was deeded to the public on January 3, 1850 during the administration of John White Geary, the city's first mayor. Its name derives from a series of violent pro-Union demonstrations staged there on the eve of the Civil War.
The buoyant figure of Victory atop the 97-foot Corinthian column commemorates Commodore George Dewey's victory over the Spanish fleet at Manila in 1898. It was dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 and withstood the 1906 earthquake.
The park's northeast corner is dominated by the 685-room, 36-story Grand Hyatt on Union Square completed in 1973.
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