As we adjust to brighter days this spring, our latest Out and About spotlight brings us to the Inner Mission, where hidden histories lie beyond the hip coffee, delicious burritos, and revelers at Dolores Park.
Alongside the imprint of vanished waterways are also important American Indian histories that the five-year old American Indian Cultural District is working to reveal, preserve, and commemorate. This includes the once thriving Ramaytush Ohlone village site of Chutchui, eradicated 12 years after the establishment of Mission Dolores, and the known gravesite of thousands of Natives at the mission site—including over 5,000 Ohlone people—who built Mission Dolores with forced labor and were housed in conditions where Native life spans averaged 10 years and the death rates tripled that of birth rates—conditions described by historian Benjamin Madley as “California’s first mass incarceration system.”
Come along as we explore these histories and more in the neighborhood. Also, make sure to scroll to the bottom of this email to find more ways that you can engage with SF Heritage at our upcoming events.
Every month, we’re taking you out and about to an area in San Francisco, giving a brief snapshot of some it its historic resources: a cultural district, a legacy business, and a landmark (or resources worthy of designation). Find previous posts here.
Q: Happy Women’s History Month! This is the beautiful Women’s Building (3543 18th Street), which in 1979 became the first woman-owned and operated community center in the country. But what building did this 1910 landmark replace?
Answer at the bottom.
American Indian Cultural District
The American Indian Cultural District is the first established Cultural District of its size in the United States dedicated to recognizing, honoring, and celebrating the American Indian legacy, culture, people, and contributions.
What is a cultural district? Cultural districts, supported by city hotel tax revenue, are an important tool to protect the broad array of tangible and intangible elements that define a community’s cultural character. Read more here.
Established in 2020, AICD’s cultural district corridor is located on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land in what is now known as the Mission neighborhood. This area includes a unique concentration of historical events, cultural resources, Native American-based programming, services, and gathering spaces important to the San Francisco Bay Area’s urban American Indian community. SF Heritage collaborated with AICD to illuminate the history behind some of these important sites in and beyond the cultural district, including the former locations of the American Indian Center, Warren’s Bar, and the American Indian Film Institute.
Communicating the message that American Indian people and history extend beyond the geographical boundary requirements of the cultural district program, AICD established its “Cultural District Hub” (which includes its offices) at Fort Mason Center overlooking Alcatraz, home of the longest documented American Indian Occupation. It serves as a collective working space and home for multiple San Francisco based American Indian groups.
On the evening of March 28, 2025, AICD will celebrate five-years of successfully advocating for equitable resources, funding, and opportunities for American Indians in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. And they have much to celebrate: placemaking efforts such as murals and crosswalks now beautify the streets of the district; community oral history and site documentation work will result in more American Indian-focused city landmarks; successful advocacy has secured millions of dollars in city funding to address Covid-19 in the American Indian community and to create an American Indian Truth & Healing Reparations Advisory Committee; their active participation is shaping interpretation efforts around public city art and monuments; and so much more. RSVP here for the Town Hall.
The Roxie Theater
Our next highlight is the Roxie Theater (3117 16th Street), one of the oldest operating movie theaters in the United States with a history dating back to the early 1900s. Located on 16th Street between Albion and Valencia streets, the site of the theater has been an operating movie theater since 1909 and was the Poppy, the Rex, the Gem, and the Gaiety prior to it becoming the Roxie in 1934 (the present building dates to 1913).
The Roxie today is run as a non-profit organization that hosts daily film screenings, festivals, special events, co-presentations, and educational programs across its two spaces—a 233-seat main theater and 47-seat Little Roxie theater for smaller showings and private screenings.
Like many historic movie theaters, their programming has evolved a lot since the 1930s to reflect changes in taste and ownership: starting with first-run, then second-run films (‘40s-’50s), German-language films (‘60s), pornographic films (late ‘60s-early ‘70s), Russian-language films (‘70s), and arthouse, international, and festival programming today.
Visit the Roxie this week as they close out their tribute to filmmaker David Lynch, or attend a special screening of Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (2005) with this year’s SF Heritage gala honorees, the Tenderloin Museum!
Parks Can Be Landmarks
Parks can be landmarks. Washington Square Park, Ingleside Terraces’ Sundial Park, and Lincoln Park are all designated Article 10 city landmarks, while Golden Gate Park is a National Register historic district.
Dolores Park, one of the most beloved, visited, and historic city parks, does not have any historic designation, but it should.
From the 1860s to the late 1880s, the two blocks between 18th and 20th Streets, Dolores and Church streets, was the largest Jewish burial ground in the Bay Area. Some 8,000 bodies were relocated to other cemeteries.
The park is strongly associated with the city’s recovery from the 1906 earthquake and fire, being first a temporary, and then an official, refugee camp. Some 500 relief cottages were constructed to house displaced San Franciscans. The camp didn’t close until October 1907, with the cottages moved by resettling refugees to private lots.
Most importantly, Dolores Park is an ideal place to recognize and center this land’s first inhabitants. A landmark designation dedicated to local Native people and their culture before the arrival of the Spanish is long overdue. Landmark designation of Mission Dolores (City Landmark no. 1) and other sites affiliated with the mission system put the stories of the colonizers first and relegate the ancestors of the Ramaytush Ohlone to supporting players.
Native people numbering likely in the thousands are interred in the land behind Mission Dolores, buried when the cemetery boundaries ran west past Church Street. As deserving of respect and recognition as this sorrowful site is—now covered by a parking lot, yard, and school—landmark designation would still feel focused on the mission system.
Working with the Ramaytush Ohlone and American Indian Cultural District, a Dolores Park landmark designation could specifically commemorate the Ohlone settlement of Chutchui, known to be near the park site. It could also acknowledge the park’s significance to 20th century American Indian communities.
We think the discussion should start. The next time you visit the park, think about the history there, and if you agree, encourage District Supervisor Raphael Mandelman to begin conversations with AICD, the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, and the Planning Department.
Q: Happy Women’s History Month! This is the beautiful Women’s Building (3543 18th Street), which in 1979 became the first woman-owned and operated community center in the country. But what building did this 1910 landmark replace?
A: 3543 18th Street was originally built as a Turnverein hall (German sports association feat. gymnastics and other sports) in 1910 before becoming Dovre Hall, a former meeting place of the Sons of Norway. This Mission Revival-style building replaced the original Turnverein structure (pictured), which stood on the same spot.
Want to Engage More with SF Heritage?
Take a guided tour of the Historic Haas-Lilienthal House
Visit the historic Haas-Lilienthal House in 2025! SF Heritage is pleased to offer Wednesday and Saturday tours each week, at noon, 1:00 pm., and 2:00 pm. Each are led by one of SF Heritage’s amazing docents. Book your spot here through April 2025
Join a live podcast recording (March 25)
Our work to preserve and protect the city’s special places is not done alone. Join a special live recording of the Western Neighborhood Project’s “Outside Lands San Francisco” podcast on Tuesday, March 25, featuring our President & CEO Woody LaBounty and spotlighting people & organizations supporting the city’s heritage.
Join the next Heritage Happy Hour (April 10)
Save the date for our next Heritage Happy Hour at Peña Pachamama on April 10, 5-7 pm!
Heritage Happy Hours are convivial no-host celebrations of San Francisco legacy businesses, hosted every second Thursday of the month by SF Heritage and the Legacy Business Program of San Francisco’s Office of Small Business. RSVP for free here
Save the date for our special earthquake program (April 17)
Save the date for a special 1906 Earthquake and Fire program at the Haas-Lilienthal House (2007 Franklin Street) on the evening of Thursday, April 17. Look out for RSVP details next week for newsletter subscribers!
