In September 1905, Daniel Burnham delivered a comprehensive plan for San Francisco to the Association for the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco. He had spent months living on Twin Peaks, studying the topography, sketching sight lines, and designing a city that would use its extraordinary natural landscape as the foundation for its built environment.
Seven months later, on April 18, 1906, the earthquake and fire destroyed most of the city. In the rush to rebuild, the plan was shelved. Property owners wanted their lots restored on the old grid. The city chose speed over vision. Burnham's plan was never adopted.
It is the greatest missed opportunity in American urban planning.
Burnham understood something about San Francisco that most planners before and since have missed: the city's hills are not obstacles. They are the plan. Every hill is a natural viewpoint. Every ridgeline is a natural boulevard. The topography itself tells you where to put the streets, the parks, and the monuments.
A radial boulevard system. Diagonal avenues radiating from a civic center at Van Ness and Market, climbing the hills and following the ridgelines to create continuous views of the bay, the ocean, and the Golden Gate. Not a flat grid imposed on hilly terrain, but a street network that worked with the landscape.
Hilltop parks and terraces. Every major hill would become a public park or terrace with panoramic views. Twin Peaks, Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, each one crowned with civic space, connected by tree-lined boulevards that followed the contour lines.
A continuous waterfront promenade. The entire bay shoreline, from the Presidio around through the Embarcadero and south along the waterfront, would become a continuous public esplanade. No industrial interruptions. No private wharves blocking public access.
A monumental civic center. Burnham proposed a grand civic complex at the intersection of Van Ness and Market Street, anchored by a domed city hall and flanked by cultural institutions, government buildings, and formal gardens. A center worthy of a great Pacific capital.
1905 plan delivered to the Association for the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco
1906 earthquake and fire destroyed the city; plan shelved in the rush to rebuild
49 hills proposed as public parks or boulevard anchors
0 diagonal boulevards built from the plan
Not nothing. The bones are visible if you know where to look.
The Civic Center. San Francisco's Civic Center, built after the earthquake in the Beaux-Arts style, sits roughly where Burnham proposed his monumental complex. City Hall, the War Memorial Opera House, the Asian Art Museum, the main library. The grouping of civic buildings in one place is Burnham's idea, even if the specific design is not his.
Twin Peaks Boulevard. The road that circles Twin Peaks follows approximately the route Burnham sketched for a hilltop drive. The parkland on Twin Peaks itself reflects his proposal for hilltop public space.
The Panhandle and Golden Gate Park axis. Already existed before Burnham, but his plan reinforced the idea of a continuous green corridor running from the civic core to the ocean. The parkway concept influenced later work on Park Presidio Boulevard.
The Embarcadero. It took a century, but the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway in 1991 (after the Loma Prieta earthquake) and the construction of the current waterfront boulevard finally delivered something close to what Burnham envisioned for the bay shoreline. Burnham proposed this in 1905. San Francisco got it in 2000.
The diagonal boulevards. This is the big one. Burnham proposed avenues that would cut diagonally across the grid, following ridgelines and connecting hilltops, creating efficient routes and dramatic vistas. San Francisco's grid was laid flat across hills without regard for topography. The diagonals would have fixed that. They would have given the city the kind of dramatic street perspectives that make Paris and Washington memorable.
The hilltop terraces. Most of San Francisco's hills are covered in houses right up to the peak. There are no public terraces, no formal viewpoints, no civic monuments on the summits. The views exist, but they belong to whoever owns the top lot, not to the public. Burnham wanted those views to belong to everyone.
The visual identity from the air. This is what San Francisco actually has, despite rejecting the plan. The white and pastel Victorians, the terracotta downtown, the green parks cutting through the urban fabric. You can see it from an airplane. You know where you are. Imagine what the city would look like if the plan had been built: diagonal boulevards tracing ridgelines, hilltop parks visible from every approach, a coherent system instead of an accident.
Burnham Civic is named for Daniel Burnham. His work in Chicago proved that a comprehensive city plan, backed by civic education and sustained public will, can reshape a city for a century. His work in San Francisco proved that even a failed plan leaves traces that the city eventually rediscovers.
We are making the case for reviving the Burnham Plan for San Francisco. Not as a historical exercise, but as an active planning framework. The diagonal boulevards, the hilltop parks, the waterfront promenade. These proposals are not obsolete. The topography has not changed. The hills are still there. The ridgelines still point toward the water. The views are still extraordinary.
San Francisco is at an inflection point. Downtown office vacancies are at historic highs. The city is rethinking its land use, its transit, and its identity. This is exactly the moment when a comprehensive vision matters most. Burnham delivered one 121 years ago. It is time to open it back up.
We are connecting with San Francisco civic organizations, planning historians, and preservation groups to build support for a formal reassessment of the Burnham Plan. The goal is simple: finish what Burnham started.
Want to support this work, contribute research, or connect us with San Francisco civic organizations? Tell us who you are.