Maiden Lane (San Francisco)
Coordinates: 37°47′17.23″N 122°24′21.67″W / 37.7881194°N 122.4060194°WMaiden Lane is a pedestrian mall located in San Francisco, California, United States. A former section of the city's red light district, Maiden Lane is now home to high-end boutiques and art galleries. The street also serves as the location of San Francisco's only Frank Lloyd Wright designed building.
Prior to the 1906 earthquake, the street was called Morton Street and was the center of San Francisco's red-light district. Historically, the street reported one murder a week. The earthquake, which leveled much of the city, rendered this two-block stretch rubble, and the brothels were destroyed. It was renamed Maiden Lane by an enterprising jeweler who wanted to conjure the Maiden Lanes of London and New York. In 1955, on the initiative of local merchants, cars were prohibited from the lane during certain times of day, an unusual measure at the time.
In 1958, Jane Jacobs described the street, in an essay that was later characterized as a "spirited rebuttal to the antiseptic urban renewal that was gospel at the time":
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