Another Fun Filled Fact ‘Bout San Francisco: Union Square

From the SFHotelstories History File: Places

Early maps of San Francisco (before it was even called that) based on surveys from 1847, show Union Square was unnamed but reserved as a public space.

Some prominent historians believe that the term “sand-lot baseball” originated in San Francisco from the use of Union Square as a make-shift baseball field.

The unnamed park was a rallying point for a Unitarian minister named Thomas Starr King, who used the space for organized gatherings to support the Union army during the Civil War. That is where Union Square got its name.

In 1943 the great San Francisco architect Timothy Pflueger, redesigned Union Square. Unique for its time because underneath was the underground parking garage in the world.

Union Square is prominently featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1973, The Conversation.

Filmmaker Philip Kaufman shut down Union Square for a week to shoot the film Blackout in 2001, When the film was released in 2004, now with the title Twisted, not one shot of that sequence was used.