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In the Works
1900-2025
Special 125-year Edition
Jan. 8, 1900, was the day the City of San Francisco officially marked the beginning of the San Francisco Board of Public Works through legislation that would usher in an era of cleaner streets and safer infrastructure for the residents of the City.
Today, we're known as San Francisco Public Works and we continue to provide many of the same programs and services that we did 125 years ago – while facing many of the same challenges.
As San Francisco's history has moved forward through prosperous and challenging times – natural disasters, wars, social and technological
revolutions, pandemics – Public Works always has been a stalwart in keeping the City clean, beautiful and safe.
Countless men and women have served the City through our organization. Technology has transformed our work. Our values have evolved. We've become a much more diverse organization. However, we know there always will be room for improvement as we continue to face old and new conundrums.
We've devoted this issue of In the Works to share with you our history through many rare images from early in the 20th century, which trace the development of Public Works and the City of San Francisco itself. Who knows what another 125 years will bring?
1900
January 8, 1900
San Francisco Public Works was officially created on Jan. 8, 1900 as the Board of Public Works. Our first task was to organize and regulate street construction and paving projects throughout the city. Our original four bureaus were: Streets, Lighting, Building, and Light & Water Services. Over the past 125 years our roles have shifted and expanded dramatically.
October 19, 1900
Max Planck introduces his law of black-body radiation to a meeting of the German Physical Society in Berlin, marking the birth of modern quantum mechanics.
MUSIC PUBLISHED IN 1900
The Flight Of The Bumble Bee,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
January 31, 1901
Anton Chekhov's play Three Sisters premieres at the Moscow Art Theatre.
San Francisco Population in 1900
342,782
June 24, 1901
The first showing of Picasso's paintings in Paris as the
19-year-old Spanish artist exhibits his work at Ambroise Vollard's gallery.
Inspecting Our Foundation:
A Reexamination of Public Works' History Through a Racial Equity Lens
1901-1934
After decades of intense debate and power struggles, the Hetch Hetchy Valley, located about 200 miles from San Francisco and part of Yosemite National Park, was chosen as the ideal source for the City’s water.
Once the site was chosen, Public Works oversaw the construction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam and a system of aqueducts that connected it to San Francisco.
While the project was successful in providing water to the residents of San Francisco, it had a devastating impact on the lives of the Ahwahnechee and Tuolumne peoples of the Sierra Miwok tribes, inhabitants of this land for thousands of years. Once the heart of their cultural, ancestral and communal life, the valley was flooded to create the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.
April 2, 1902
April 2 – The Electric Theatre, the first movie theater in California, opens in Los Angeles.
November 16, 1902
A newspaper cartoon depicting U.S. President "Teddy" Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear cub inspires creation of the first teddy bear by Morris Michtom in New York City.
MUSIC PUBLISHED IN 1902
The Entertainer, Scott Joplin
June 16, 1903
Henry Ford starts the Ford Motor Company with $28,000 in cash from 12 investors.
October 1-13, 1903
First modern World Series: The Boston Americans defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates in eight games.
December 17, 1903
Orville Wright flies an aircraft with a petrol engine, the Wright Flyer, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in the first documented and successful powered and controlled heavier-than-air flight.
February 17, 1904
Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly debuts
at La Scala in Milan.
November 21, 1905
Einstein puts forward the idea of mass–energy equivalence by publishing the equation E = mc2
April 18, 1906
The San Francisco Earthquake –estimated magnitude 7.9 on the San Andreas Fault – destroys much of San Francisco, California, killing at least 3,000, with 225,000–300,000 left homeless, and $350 million in damages (equivalent to more than $12 billion in 2025).
1910
Workers pave Mission Street at 18th Street, 1910.
San Francisco Population in 1910
416,912
December 14, 1911
Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition reaches the geographic South Pole.
April 14-15, 1912
The RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg in the northern Atlantic Ocean and sinks with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
October 25, 1913
Cornerstone of new City Hall laid.
December 8, 1913
Construction begins on the Palace of Fine Arts for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. Public Works would restore the iconic structure almost a century later in 2009.
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June 28, 1914
Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, 19, assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Duchess Sophie, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, triggering the July Crisis overnight and eventually World War I.
Third Street bridge construction in 1915. Public Works has been operating, maintaining and retrofitting this project since.
A street flusher makes its way down Polk Street in front of City Hall, 1916.
April 6, 1917
WWI: The United States declares war on Germany.
Mechanical street sweeper, 1918.
January 1918
The "Spanish flu" (influenza) is first observed in Haskell County, Kansas, and becomes a pandemic that summer.
1920
San Francisco Population in 1920
506,676
August 18, 1920
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage.
Army Street (now Cesar Chavez Blvd.) sewer construction, 1923.
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San Francisco Board of Public Works street cleaning truck, 1923.
November 1924
The last known sighting of a California grizzly bear is recorded by Colonel John R. White at Sequoia National Park.
April 10, 1925
F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes his novel The Great Gatsby in New York.
October 14, 1926
A. A. Milne's children's book Winnie-the-Pooh is published in London, featuring the eponymous bear.
Worker operating an excavator, 1928.
Workers move sand at the Great Highway, 1928. We still perform this Sisyphean task every year.
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May 16, 1929
The first Academy Awards are presented in a 15-minute ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, honoring the best movies of 1927 and 1928.
October 24 - 29, 1929
Wall Street Crash of 1929: Three multi-digit percentage drops wipe out more than $30 billion from the New York Stock Exchange.
1930
San Francisco Population in 1930
634,394
Inspecting Our Foundation:
A Reexamination of Public Works' History Through a Racial Equity Lens
1933-1939
The Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 with a stock market crash, shattered the global economy and left tens of millions of people unemployed. In response to this unprecedented crisis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted a series of economic reforms called the New Deal.
A key piece of New Deal legislation was the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which established the Public Works Administration (PWA). The PWA provided money for public construction and infrastructure projects to be carried out in the open market by private firms.
Over the next decade, Public Works awarded and administered contracts for dozens of PWA-funded projects throughout San Francisco, including sewer improvement projects, updates to the auxiliary water supply system, boulevard construction and street repaving.
From its onset, the PWA implemented hiring quotas for all projects it funded to ensure that minority (especially Black) workers had access to work opportunities. This action became a model for subsequent equal opportunity efforts, including many that the City of San Francisco currently has in place, such as minority- and women-owned contracting preferences and local hiring ordinances.
March 4, 1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt is sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States.
November 12, 1936
The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic.
A Public Works garbage truck, 1933.
May 6, 1937
Hindenburg disaster: In the United States, the German airship Hindenburg bursts into flames when mooring to a mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
May 1937
More than 200,000 pedestrians walk across the Golden Gate Bridge when it opens to the public for the first time on May 27. The bridge opened to vehicular traffic on May 28, under budget and ahead of schedule.
Surveyors measure a sidewalk on Market Street near Montgomery Street, 1937. Learn more about what our surveyors do.
June 1937
Picasso completes his painting Guernica.
July 2, 1937
Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear after taking off from New Guinea during Earhart's attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world.
February 4, 1938
Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first cel-animated feature in motion picture history, is released in the United States.
August 1939
The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming and King Vidor, premieres at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Hollywood.
MUSIC PUBLISHED IN 1939
South of the Border (Down Mexico Way), Shep Fields
Jeepers Creepers, Al Donahue Orchestra
1940
San Francisco Population in 1940
634,536
Workers perform crack sealing, 1941.
May 1, 1941
The breakfast cereal Cheerios is introduced as CheeriOats by General Mills in the United States.
December 7, 1941
Attack on Pearl Harbor: Aircraft flying from Imperial Japanese Navy carriers launch a surprise attack on the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, thus drawing the United States into World War II.
Inspecting Our Foundation:
A Reexamination of Public Works' History Through a Racial Equity Lens
1944-1960
Municipal Railway Streetcar Removal
Between 1944 and 1960, the San Francisco Municipal Railway (the precursor to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency) undertook a major restructuring of the City's transportation system. The transit agency enlisted the help of Public Works to manage the removal of a vast majority of the City's streetcar rails so the streets could be paved over to prioritize buses and private vehicles.
This initiative prioritized the desires of those who could afford to own cars at the expense of those who could not. Those who could not afford cars were also more likely to be people of color, as evidenced by the overall wealth and income disparities that existed then and persist today. By 1960, Public Works, under Muni's direction, had dismantled 116 miles of streetcar rails across the City, many of them located in the Fillmore and Western Addition redevelopment areas.
May 1945
The Holocaust – the genocide of some six million European Jews during World War II – ends in May 1945 with the military defeat of Nazi Germany and its European collaborators.
September 2, 1945
World War II ends with Japan's surrender.
March 12, 1947
The Cold War begins: The Truman Doctrine is proclaimed to help stem the spread of Communism.
April 15, 1947
Jackie Robinson, the first African American in Major League Baseball in the modern era, makes his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in front of 26,623 fans at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York.
October 1, 1949
The People's Republic of China is officially proclaimed.
Repair crew working at Mission and Fourth streets, 1949.
Inspecting Our Foundation:
A Reexamination of Public Works' History Through a Racial Equity Lens
1949
Redevelopment
In San Francisco, redevelopment projects occurred in many neighborhoods, but were most impactful in the Fillmore and Western Addition, which at that time had the City’s largest Black and Japanese American populations.
The first step of the redevelopment process was to inspect the building quality and living conditions in target areas.
The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency was the first municipal department to conduct these inspections, but they soon solicited the services of the Public Works Bureau of Building Inspection to expedite and ramp up the process.
Through its Urban Renewal Division, Public Works conducted thousands of building inspections on behalf of the Redevelopment Agency in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
1950
June 27, 1950
Korean War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman orders American military forces to aid in the defense of South Korea.
October 2, 1950
The comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz is first published in seven U.S. newspapers.
April 19, 1950
Construction of the Broadway Tunnel begins.
San Francisco Population in 1950
775,357
October 15, 1951
I Love Lucy airs its first episode on CBS.
MUSIC PUBLISHED IN 1951
Unforgettable, Nat King Cole
New street sweeper vehicle, 1951.
Public Works crews chop a fallen tree to clear the road for traffic, 1952.
March 26, 1953
Jonas Salk announces the polio vaccine.
April 25, 1953
Francis Crick and James Watson publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid", their description of the double helix structure of DNA.
May 29, 1953
Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay from Nepal become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
December 5, 1955
The Montgomery Improvement Association is formed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Black ministers to coordinate the Montgomery bus boycott.
February 22, 1956
Elvis Presley enters the United States music charts for the first time, with "Heartbreak Hotel".
Arborists pruning a Chinese Elm at Arguello Boulevard and Golden Gate Avenue, 1956.
2,500-gallon flusher, 1958.
Locksmith Shop, 1958.
January 3, 1959
Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.
March 9, 1959
Mattel's Barbie doll debuts in the United States.
August 21, 1959
Hawaii is admitted as the 50th and last U.S. state.
1960
Inspecting Our Foundation:
A Reexamination of Public Works' History Through a Racial Equity Lens
1960s - 1970s
Public Works Plays Pivotal Role
in Struggle Over International Hotel
Located along 10 blocks of Kearny Street, San Francisco’s Manilatown neighborhood was home to some 30,000 Filipinos and served as the cultural and economic hub for the City’s Filipino community from the 1920s to the 1970s. At the geographic and spiritual heart of Manilatown stood the International Hotel, a residential hotel that housed roughly 200 working-class, predominantly elderly Filipinos.
By the late 1960s, the owner of the hotel had begun pursuing plans to demolish and replace it with a parking structure, which would inevitably destroy a beloved community gathering space while displacing its residents and leaving them without adequate replacement housing.
Public Works, which at the time oversaw building permits, allowed the demolition to proceed through the administrative process. Despite strong community opposition, the International Hotel eventually was razed in 1979.
San Francisco Population in 1960
740,316
MUSIC PUBLISHED IN 1960
Let's Twist Again, Chubby Checker
April 12, 1961
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space.
Eureka Valley Branch Library, 1961.
Galileo High School students partner with Public Works staff for a neighborhood cleanup event, 1962.
Potrero Hill neighbors work to beautify the areas alongside Vermont Street and create a pathway of flowers, 1962.
August 28, 1963
Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of at least 250,000 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
November 22, 1963
President John F. Kennedy is assassinated.
TOP HITS IN 1963
Surfin' U.S.A., The Beach Boys
I Want to Hold Your Hand, The Beatles
May 2, 1964
Some 400 - 1,000 students march through Times Square, New York, and another 700 in San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War.
July 2, 1964
The United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 is enacted.
Civic Center Auditorium renovation, 1964.
January 27, 1965
Ground broken for “Dragon Gateway” to Grant Avenue
The Gateway Arch (Dragon Gate) on Grant Avenue at Bush Streets marks the entry to Chinatown, which was dedicated on Oct. 18th, 1970. This iconic symbol conforms to Chinese gateway standards using stone from the base to the top and features a green tiled roof. Public Works maintains the cleanliness and integrity of the gateway.
New McLaren Park children's play area, 1965.
300,000-pound concrete and steel testing machine at the Materials Testing Lab, 1965. Our lab today.
Summer of 1967
Nearly 100,000 young people, hippies and beatniks congregate in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and Golden Gate Park to celebrate the Summer of Love, a cultural phenomenon celebrating peace, love and freedom of expression.
April 4, 1968
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
TOP HITS IN 1968
Hey Jude, The Beatles
(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding
Mrs. Robinson, Simon & Garfunkel
Public Works oversees improvements and expansion to Candlestick Park (now demolished), including installation of artificial turf and seats, 1969.
July 20, 1969
Apollo 11's Lunar Module Eagle lands on the moon's surface. Nearly 600 million people worldwide watch in awe as Neil Armstrong takes his first historic steps on the surface.
November 10, 1969
The television series Sesame Street premieres on National Educational Television.
October 29, 1969
The first electronic message is sent between two computers connected via ARPANET between University of California, Los Angeles, and the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California at around 10:30 p.m. local time, the initial forerunning technology to the internet.
1970
A Public Works-led neighborhood planting project, 1970.
A "blockman," the equivalent of what is known as a corridor worker, or block sweeper, today, tidying a commercial corridor, 1971.
San Francisco Population in 1970
715,674
A streetscape reconstruction and beautification project at Sanchez and 14th streets, 1973.
The Electrical Shop repaired and tested synchronous, impulse and carrier type clocks before the advent of digital clocks, 1974.
August 8, 1974
Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces his resignation.
TOP HITS IN 1974
The Way We Were, Barbara Streisand
Bennie and the Jets, Elton John
IN 1974
Rubik's Cube puzzle is invented by Hungarian architecture professor Ernő Rubik.
Cement masons complete a new sidewalk in front of the War Memorial Opera House, 1974.
Crews remove litter from a street in Chinatown, 1974.
April 4, 1975
Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
April 30, 1975
The Vietnam War ends with the fall of Saigon.
April 1, 1976
Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in California.
The Tymco Model 600 mechanical street sweeper is introduced in 1977. The 600 is still the sweeper of choice today.
November 18, 1978
Jonestown Massacre – San Francisco-based Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones leads hundreds of his followers in a mass murder-suicide at their agricultural commune in a remote part of the South American nation of Guyana.
November 27, 1978
San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay rights leader, are shot to death inside San Francisco City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White.
New trash can unveiling in Noe Valley, 1978.
March 8, 1979
Philips demonstrates the compact disc publicly for the first time.
TOP HITS IN 1979
My Sharona, The Knack
Reunited, Peaches & Herb
Y.M.C.A., Village People
1980
San Francisco Population in 1980
678,974
May 18, 1980
The eruption of Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington State kills 57 and causes $1.1 billion in damage (equivalent to roughly $4 billion in 2025).
May 22, 1980
Pac-Man, the highest-earning arcade game of all time, is released in Japan.
Inspecting Our Foundation:
A Reexamination of Public Works' History Through a Racial Equity Lens
Typically, the cycle adheres to the following format: the Healthy Streets Operations Center team conducts outreach, offering a combination of shelter options and health and social services before an encampment can be cleared. At that time, people living at the encampments have the option of taking their belongings with them or having them “bagged and tagged,” which means the items are logged and stored by Public Works for later retrieval. Abandoned items, food and items that are soiled or moldy are thrown away. Public Works posts notices at the site in English, Spanish and Chinese with information on the retrieval process. People also have a right to file a legal claim against the City if they feel their items were discarded in violation of the bag and tag policy. Once the Healthy Streets Operations Center conducts an encampment resolution at a specific location, the City may take steps to keep people from setting up camp there again. In addition to encampment cleanups, Public Works has been involved in several other proactive initiatives involving San Francisco’s unhoused population.
1981 to today
Responding to Homelessness
and Street Behavior
For the last half-century, homelessness has been one of San Francisco’s most intractable problems, vexing generations of policymakers, activists and voters.
In addition to being a public health, safety, law enforcement and civil rights issue, San Francisco’s homelessness crisis also has a racial justice element, as Black and Latinx San Franciscans make up a disproportionate segment of the City’s homeless population.
Since 1981, San Francisco has passed more regulations governing unhoused people’s actions in public spaces than any other city in California – the most controversial of these being the confiscation, storage or disposal of belongings that accumulate and obstruct the public right of way or pose a public health risk.
As stewards of the City’s public right of way, Public Works regularly interacts with San Francisco’s unhoused population in a variety of ways.
The City’s encampment clearance protocols, which are a joint effort involving the multi-agency Healthy Streets Operations Center, Public Works and the Police Department, remain a constant source of controversy and disagreement between the unhoused community, advocates and City officials.
Sheet Metal Shop - louvered intake, 1982.
TOP HITS IN 1980
Call Me, Blondie
Rock With You, Michael Jackson
Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Queen
September 25, 1981
Sandra Day O'Connor takes her seat as the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
June 11, 1982
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is released in the United States.
November 29, 1982
Michael Jackson releases his sixth studio album, Thriller, in the United States, which will go on to be the best-selling album of all time at 105 million units sold worldwide.
Plumbing Shop – plumber running a pipe threader, 1984.
Inspecting Our Foundation:
A Reexamination of Public Works' History Through a Racial Equity Lens
This investigation led to further legislative action. In the late 1980s, the City instituted a series of bid preferences for these marginalized businesses in hopes of increasing their involvement in publicly funded work. Over the ensuing decades, we’ve seen improvements with the contracting rates of locally owned businesses, but stagnation in minority- and women-owned business contracting still exists both citywide and with Public Works.
1984 to today
The Long Struggle for Equity
in City Contracting
In April 1984, the Board of Supervisors passed Ordinance 139-84, stating its intent to address identified discriminatory practices in the City's contracting methods that resulted in the exclusion of minority- and women-owned businesses as contractors, as well as to address the economic disadvantages faced by local businesses. Subsequent studies commissioned by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission throughout the mid-1980s investigated the City's contracting processes, confirming the Board of Supervisors' suspicions of a dramatic under-representation of local minority- and women-owned businesses to be mostly accurate.
Glazier repairing a broken door, 1985.
Public Works designs and manages construction of the exterior restoration of the Legion of Honor, 1986.
January 28, 1986
Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates 73 seconds after launch from the United States, killing the crew of seven astronauts, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.
April 26, 1986
A mishandled safety test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine, leads to radioactive fallout from the accident, forcing at least 350,000 people near the site to resettle.
TOP HITS IN 1986
That's What Friend's Are For, Dionne and Friends
How Will I Know, Whitney Houston
Street inspector Carl Lee prepares to issue notice to repair a sidewalk, 1986.
Surveyors Michael Scott and Hellmund Wong prepare survey for the Great Highway seawall, 1986.
The great musical flusher, 1986.
More than 100 daily assignments handled each morning in the Centralized Dispatch Office, 1987.
October 17, 1989
The 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta Earthquake strikes the greater San Francisco Bay Area, causing 63 deaths, nearly 3,800 injuries and an estimated $6 billion in property damage (equivalent to roughly $15 billion in 2025).
Clockwise from left: City Engineer Frank Moss confers with Don McConlogue of Building Inspection regarding the quake-damaged Marina District. Street cleaner front-end loader operated by Tim Hines removes earthquake debris deposited at an emergency transfer station. Street cleaner Cordero Weyant ensures public safety by removing earthquake debris from a public sidewalk.
At the Opera House: Bureau of Building Repair glaziers Delmar Sanford, Darryl Victor and Rober Thorstad replace glass damaged by the earthquake.
May 17, 1989
Tiananmen Square protests: More than 1,000,000 Chinese protesters march through Beijing demanding greater democracy, leading to a crackdown.
November 9, 1989
The Berlin Wall falls.
December 26, 1991
The Soviet Union dissolves and the Cold War ends.
1990
San Francisco Population in 1990
723,959
TOP HITS IN 1991
Everything I Do, I Do It for You, Bryan Adams
Everybody Dance Now, C+C Music Factory
Sunset Branch Library seismic and access upgrade, 1993.
Jake Szeto informing flower stand vendor of encroachment permit requirements, 1993.
July 5, 1994
Jeff Bezos founds Amazon.
Mission Police Station is dedicated, 1994.
United Nations Plaza upgrades are completed in time for the U.N. 50 celebration, 1995.
June 21, 1997
The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) plays its first game at The Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California.
September 4, 1998
Google, Inc. is founded in Menlo Park, California, by Stanford University Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
January 1, 1999
The euro currency is established and the European Central Bank assumes its full powers.
1997 - 1999
City Hall suffered extensive damage during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. A necessary seismic upgrade provided the impetus to restore the building’s architectural beauty as well as bring it into the 21st century with state-of-the-art technology.
Inspecting Our Foundation:
A Reexamination of Public Works' History Through a Racial Equity Lens
1840s to 1990s
Overturning a History
of Neglect in Chinatown
A staggering 41 alleyways crisscross San Francisco’s Chinatown, a neighborhood defined by both its extreme density and its deep cultural heritage. Chinatown’s lack of open, outdoor space has made these alleyways especially important in serving as a collective front yard where children play and adults socialize.
Until the late 1990s however, these alleyways were deprived of many City services, including garbage collection and street cleaning. For decades, the City’s prevailing justification against providing services to these alleyways was that they were private rather than public streets and therefore not within the City’s jurisdiction.
This perspective remained largely unexamined and unchallenged until the early 1990s when Jasmine Kaw, then a landscape architecture intern with Public Works who concurrently was doing research for her master's thesis at UC Berkeley, made a crucial discovery.
While searching through Public Works’ Bureau of Street Mapping’s “Street Book” – a legal document that serves as the official record for which of San Francisco’s streets are public and which are private – Kaw found that a majority of Chinatown’s alleyways are legally classified as public streets, therefore entitling them to City services. Upon making this discovery, Kaw and her community partners at the Chinatown Community Development Center brought this to the City’s attention, and Public Works began facilitating regular garbage collection and street cleaning services in Chinatown’s alleyways shortly thereafter.
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Public Works embarks on the design and construction of a new Emergency Communications Center to replace the existing 911 call-taking system, 1997-1998.
Graffiti removal, 1999.
2000
San Francisco Population in 2000
777,360
September 11, 2001
Approximately 2,977 victims are killed or fatally injured in the September 11 attacks after two Boeing 767s, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, are hijacked and crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Two more planes are hijacked – one crashing into the Pentagon and another into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Top Hits in 2001
Drops of Jupiter, Train
Thank You, Dido
Community Clean Team, San Francisco Public Works’ longest-running and largest volunteer program, begins. The program stages beautification events once a month for each district through landscaping and gardening projects, graffiti removal and litter cleanup. Today, the program is known as Love Our City: Neighborhood Beautification Day, 2001.
April 14, 2003
The Human Genome Project is completed, with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.
February 4, 2004
Mark Zuckerberg launches “TheFacebook”, later renamed to Facebook, a social networking website for Harvard University students.
February 14, 2005
YouTube, an American online video sharing and social media platform is founded and the first video on YouTube is released on April 23, 2005.
Public Works launches the Graffiti Watch program, a citywide volunteer effort to prevent and remove graffiti on public property, 2005.
The Excelsior Branch Library opens following a seismic retrofit and many other improvements, 2005.
Public Works designs and constructs the new Octavia Boulevard as part of the overall Central Freeway Replacement Project, 2005.
January 9, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco, commencing the era of smartphones.
Two blocks of deteriorated roadway at Waverly Place in the heart of Chinatown are reconstructed to provide an attractive new streetscape with specially colored concrete and textured asphalt paving, 2006.
November 4, 2008
Democratic U.S. Senator Barack Obama defeats Republican candidate John McCain and is elected the 44th President of the United States, making him the first African American to be elected to the office.
Public Works provides project management services for the design and construction of the California Academy of Sciences, which opens to the public in September 2008.
Public Works transforms 7,800 square feet of space at 17th and Castro streets into an inviting plaza for residents to enjoy, 2009.
2010
San Francisco Population in 2010
805,235
January 4, 2010
The tallest man-made structure to date, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is officially opened.
Phase 1 of the Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response (ESER) bond passes to provide $420.4 million to fund improvements to essential public safety facilities and seismically upgrade their aging infrastructure, 2010.
Public Works oversees the $594 million Laguna Honda Hospital Replacement Program from planning through construction, 2010.
March 11, 2011
A 9.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hits the east of Japan, killing 19,759 and leaving another 2,553 missing.
Top Hits of 2011
Rolling in the Deep, Adele
Firework, Katy Perry
The Valencia Streetscape Improvement Project, between 15th and 19th streets, provides sidewalk improvements on both the east and west sides of Valencia Street, 2010.
The Leland Avenue Streetscape Improvement Project is completed, 2011.
On behalf of the Recreation and Park Department, we provided architectural, landscape design, engineering and construction management services for the new Betty Ann Ong Recreation Center, 2011.
The $248 million Road Repaving and Street Safety Bond is approved by San Francisco voters, allowing the City to repave streets, make safety improvements and repair deteriorating structures, 2011.
Public Works celebrates the grand opening of the new, 13-story headquarters of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), a project-managed by Public Works, 2012.
At the direction of Mayor Ed Lee and in partnership with the San Francisco Giants, Public Works launches Giant Sweep, a citywide anti-litter campaign that uses hands-on volunteer activities and public education to bolster civic pride and keep San Francisco clean and beautiful, 2013.
June 26, 2013
In a landmark 5-4 decision, the high court strikes down the federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, clearing the way for gay marriage throughout the U.S.
James R. Herman Cruise Terminal opens at Pier 27. Public Works oversaw the development of the existing Pier 27 into a new primary cruised ship terminal and public plaza, 2014.
Pit Stop Program begins in the Tenderloin to provide clean and safe public toilets, as well as used-needle receptacles and dog waste stations, in San Francisco's most impacted neighborhoods. All the Pit Stop facilities are staffed by paid attendants who help ensure that the bathrooms are well maintained and used for their intended purpose, 2014.
The historic San Francisco War Memorial Veterans Building, which opened in 1932 and was the site of the signing of the United Nations Charter in 1945, undergoes essential seismic upgrades and improvements, 2015.
San Francisco’s new Police Department Headquarters and public safety campus opens in Mission Bay neighborhood. Public Works provided project and construction management, 2015.
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center Opens
Public Works managed construction of
one of the largest capital projects in our department's history: a 484,000- square-foot, seven-story hospital with 284 beds, birthing suites with soaking tubs, a specialized geriatric unit, a dedicated pediatric waiting room, a rooftop garden and new equipment and technology. The project was designed to meet the needs of a 21st-century hospital and regional trauma center and construction was financed by an $887.4 million bond, overwhelmingly passed by San Francisco voters in 2008, 2015.
First Navigation Center opens in the Mission District on a former school site. The innovative homeless shelter aims to move people living in street encampments into more stable housing, 2015.
Proposition E is approved by 76% of voters, allowing Public Works to care for the City’s 125,000-plus street trees and fix tree-related sidewalk damage under the new StreetTreeSF program, 2016.
October 2017
Over the first weeks of October, the #MeToo starts trending on social media, underscoring how pervasive and damaging sexual abuse is for women.
Glen Canyon Park Recreation Center reopens after a $14 million makeover, 2017.
April 15, 2019
Much of the world watches in horror as fire rages at Notre-Dame de Paris in France, destroying the spire and most of the roof of the beloved cathedral.
2020
San Francisco Population in 2020
870,014
March 11, 2020
The World Health Organization declares the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.
2020
The COVID-19 global pandemic saw Public Works employees, as designated essential workers, on the front line of the City’s response by reprioritizing resources and deploying staff where needed to keep San Francisco clean, safe and resilient.
2020
Margaret Hayward Playground reopens following a $28 million renovation that transformed the beloved 6-acre park in the heart of the Western Addition into a modern hub for recreation.
2020
Fireboat Station No. 35 opens at Pier 22 ½ as a two-story, 14,837-square-foot facility built on top of a steel float, anchored by guide piles, allowing it to rise and fall with the natural tide of the Bay, king tides and projected sea level rise.
2020
San Francisco voters approve a ballot measure to split Public Works into two, spinning off a new department, Department of Sanitation and Streets, to focus on operational functions, including street cleaning and tree care. However, before the split was fully implemented, voters went back to the ballot and reversed course in 2022 to keep Public Works whole. Both ballot measures, however, created two commissions. The Public Works Commission approves the department's budget and large contracts and reviews performance. The Sanitation and Streets Commission is charged with establishing minimum standards of cleanliness for the public right of way.
Inspecting Our Foundation:
A Reexamination of Public Works' History Through a Racial Equity Lens
Going forward, the department, in collaboration with other City agencies, hopes to formally establish standards for non-commercial murals in the public right of way, integrating community input into the process while preserving the right to free speech and sticking with the department’s current rules against hate speech. As Public Works continues its path to become a more racially equitable department in both its internal and external operations, it must remain responsive to a San Francisco populace that is similarly prioritizing racial equity, while protecting the fair application of First Amendment-protected speech.
2021
Displays of Protest and Political Speech
in the Public Right of Way
During the popular uprising in support of racial justice in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, a handful of murals, banners and pieces of street art supporting police reform, justice for the victims of police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement were installed across San Francisco.
Since many of these public art pieces were along public rights of way, they came under Public Works’ jurisdiction. Some San Franciscans who lived in the vicinity of these murals complained about their presence, claiming that they contained controversial, anti-police messages. Despite these complaints, Public Works kept most of these murals and banners up, a decision that was rooted in the department’s policy to only remove hate speech or profanity, or street murals that pose a traffic or safety hazard.
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2021
The state-of-the-art Animal Care and Control facility opens to serve the City’s animals and the humans who care for them.
January 6, 2021
A mob of pro-Trump demonstrators storms the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop lawmakers from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
June 17, 2021
President Biden signs legislation officially establishing June 19 as Juneteenth National Independence Day, a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
Top Hits of 2021
Levitating, Dua Lipa
Good 4 U, Olivia Rodrigo
November 30, 2022
OpenAI releases ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot able to answer questions and write essays.
2022
At the northern edge of San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, the Southeast Community Center opens as an oasis of community-building against an industrial backdrop.
2023
San Francisco is awarded a $12 Million federal grant to plant thousands of new street trees to fight climate change and provide green jobs.
2023
San Francisco Public Works opens the City's first street tree nursery, an initiative that focuses on expansion of the City’s urban forest, climate protection and workforce development to benefit underserved communities.