Quick answer
The Excelsior District runs along Mission Street in southern San Francisco, its homestead filed in 1869. Developer Emanuel Lewis named many streets for countries and their capitals and built 200 houses that sold after the 1906 earthquake. Once Italian, Irish and Swiss, it is now a strongly Latino and Filipino district, among the city's most diverse.
Full transcript
An 1869 Name That Means Upward
An 1869 homestead filing gave this patch of the city its name, one Latin word that means ever upward. Before the name there was ranch country — the whole area lay inside Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo, prickly grass on the far south edge of town. The Excelsior grew slowly, a spread of small houses and corner stores along Mission Street instead of any grand plaza. Stop where Mission and Excelsior Avenues cross and look up at the street sign for a moment, because the district wore its ambition right there in its own name.
Streets That Read Like a Passport
The street names here read like a passport. Much of the district was laid out by a developer named Emanuel Lewis, who named the major avenues for countries and the cross streets for their capitals, and who built about 200 houses that moved fast after the 1906 earthquake. Not every name stuck. Excelsior Avenue was born as China Street, changed along with Japan and India Streets nearby during the anti-Asian feeling behind the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Walk from Peru Street up toward Excelsior Avenue and you are walking through a rename, layer by layer, still posted on the signs.
The Census, Written Aloud
By the late twentieth century the mix had swung hard: Central Americans and Mexicans arrived, then Filipinos, layering over the old Italian, Irish and Swiss base until the district came to be counted among the most diverse in the city. The storefronts along Mission Street track the change — the turn-of-the-century Royal Baking Company building is today a pasteleria turning out sweets for a Mexican and Central American clientele. It all sits a short bus ride south of the center, and Excelsior Playground, with its tennis and a clubhouse that runs programs in many languages, gathers the neighborhood's evening energy. Stand on the playground sidelines and simply listen — the accents are the story with the numbers left out.