This month, San Francisco Heritage’s Heritage in the Neighborhoods program spotlighted the area south of Market Street, which throughout its history has been an industrial and manufacturing district and home to successive waves of arriving immigrant populations.
Today, the South of Market—”SOMA”—is home to two city cultural districts: SOMA Pilipinas and the Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District. Both advocate for greater recognition and protection of the community spaces, businesses, and residences of the area’s cultural communities.
Our Heritage in the Neighborhoods program explores how our work at SF Heritage and in preservation can ensure vibrant futures for the city’s unique neighborhoods. Throughout the course of the month, we have identified several preservation opportunities that we can push forward.
Legacy Business Registry recognition for the Hotel Utah & JT Restaurant
SF Heritage was instrumental in the creation of San Francisco’s Legacy Business Registry, which provides recognition and additional protections for the city’s longtime business anchors. In the South of Market, both the Hotel Utah Saloon (500 4th Street) and JT Restaurant (953 Mission Street) operate inside recently landmarked buildings and qualify for the Registry (businesses must be 30 years old or older without a significant break in business operations).
SF Heritage is in contact with SOMA Pilipinas and the South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN) about JT’s potential application. Both organizations spearheaded the milestone landmarking of the Mint Mall and Hall where the business is located, and have long recognized the restaurant as a significant place for the Filipino community in the South of Market.
New Life for the Old Mint
The Old Mint at 5th and Mission Streets has had many lives since serving as one of the country’s premiere gold reserves and currency producers.
The city landmark has also constantly been in danger of demolition and neglect, landing on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list twice (1994 and 2015). The city has tasked multiple organizations to help guide the Old Mint to a new publicly-assessible future, but the result of this work has yet to come to fruition. Today, the Mint is used for corporate parties and select productions.
This building deserves to be preserved and appropriately maintained as a public space worthy of its long and signficiant history. SF Heritage is in contact with city representiatives about the current status of Old Mint, and recommends a third mayoral task force to restart conversations about this site’s future.
Recognizing South of Market’s Greek Heritage
St. Michael’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church stands today at as a legacy of South of Market’s little-known Greek heritage. Formerly Holy Trinity, it was the 12th oldest Greek Orthodox parish in the United States and first in the west when it was founded in 1903. Its formerly humble church building was reconstructed at 345 7th Street after being destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fires. Today St. Michael’s is a Ukranian Orthodox congregation, and its building is still used for civic, social, and religious events.
SF Heritage supports the Planning Department’s new district-by-district landmarking program, which aims to protect important neighborhood sites in conjunction with the mayor’s Family Zoning Plan. We will reach out to Planning staff about St. Michael’s inclusion in this program, and will continue to advocate for landmarked and Category A buildings to be excluded from upzoning ahead of November’s Board of Supervisor’s vote on the plan.
Commemorating an Important Site in National Civil Rights History
The site of the Yick Wo laundry at 349 3rd Street in today’s South of Market, currently an open-air parking lot, has no plaque or sign denoting the location’s significance. In 1885, Lee Yick, the owner of the laundry, challenged the discriminatory application of a San Francisco ordinance. In an act of anti-Chinese racism, the city had denied necessary permits to all but one of the more than 200 Chinese laundries while granting permits to all but one of white-owned laundries.
Yick filed suit along with Wo Lee, another laundry operator, and what happened next was of momentous significance to US Civil Rights history. In 1886, the case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins reached all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled for the plaintiffs. The court determined that the equal protection and due process clauses defined in the Constitution’s 14th amendment applied to all persons “without regard to any differences of race, color, or of nationality.”
This interpretation is as important today as it was in 1886. SF Heritage joins the many historians and groups who believe there should be something to commemorate this South of Market site of national significance.
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SF Heritage will next reach out to District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey to advocate for each of these preservation opportunities, and look forward to continuing to work with his office to preserve SOMA’s important sites and living histories.
We hope you enjoyed our coverage this month of San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood. If you missed it, take a look at our recent history program on October 28, 2025 where we shared photo highlights of some of the district’s special places:
Visit our Heritage in the Neighborhoods: South of Market page for all the posts we’ve shared this month:
