Richmond

351 9th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94118

The Richmond is one of the best-preserved parts of the entire scale model. One can easily see how colorful and dense the neighborhood had become by 1938. Visible are the streetcar rails that serviced the area, connecting residents to downtown via Geary Boulevard and Balboa, Clement, and California Streets and offering greater access to Golden Gate Park and the bygone Bay District Race Track. The rail lines allowed Richmond District residents to commute easily to the center of the city, while the neighborhood’s southern counterpart—the Sunset—was still primarily sand dunes. Also visible is this branch library, built in 1914—the first San Francisco branch built with funds from Andrew Carnegie.

Not visible on the model are the communities who have defined the neighborhood over the years. The Richmond’s diverse ethnic characteristics took root in the early 1900s, when Russian Orthodox and Eastern European Jews moved in from the Western Addition. Japanese Americans followed after World War II, when they returned from internment and found their Western Addition homes occupied by wartime workers. In the 1950s, so many Chinese Americans bought houses along Clement Street that people called the area “New Chinatown.” After the fall of the Soviet Union, the already significant Russian population in the Richmond swelled in the area around Geary Boulevard, earning the nickname “Little Russia.”