Saint Patrick's Church, on Mission Street near 4th

Saint Patrick's Church, on Mission Street between 3rd and 4th, standing in the shadow of the Marriot Hotel, was built in 1872 to replace the original Saint Patrick's on Market Street, which was gutted in 1906 and rebuilt minus the original spire. The church, which once had 30,000 parishioners, is a lonely reminder that SOMA was a heavily Irish working class neighborhood. Today the parishioners are mostly Filipino. The pre-1906 Saint Patrick's with its original spire can be clearly seen in the famous 1878 Muybridge Panoramic photograph of San Francisco that was taken from the top of the Mark Hopkins mansion on Nob Hill. To view this panorama, go to the SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY section on my web site, click on Muybridge 1878 Panorama. Saint Patrick's appears in the #6 panel. To view the entire panorama as a single page,
click the blue word HERE. It's a big file, and takes time to load, but it's worth it.

A seventeen foot long print of the Muybridge photo can be seen during business hours at the BIG 4 Restaurant in the Huntington Hotel on Nob Hill, and at the Wells Fargo Museum on the Well Fargo Museum at 420 Montgomery between California and Sacramento.

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