The Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco

The Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco is the area where Haight Street and Ashbury Street cross. The district is the area surrounding the intersection and the two names are in honour of a San Franciscan banker called Henry Haight, and Munroe Ashbury, a politician who was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors between 1864 and 1870. Henry Haight and Munroe Ashbury helped plan the construction of San Francisco and also were involved in the planning of the Golden Gate Park.  

19th CENTURY HAIGHT & ASHBURY
Prior to the development of the Haight Street Cable Railroad in 1883, the area that is now called Haight-Ashbury was a mix of farmland and sand dunes. The transport link from Haight-Ashbury to the western end of Golden Gate Park via Market Street encouraged development of the area and over the following twenty years it became a sought after residential suburb for middleclass families. Haight-Ashbury is also one of the few neighbourhoods to not suffer fire damage following the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake in 1906.

HAIGHT & ASHBURY IN THE 1930s
During the Depression years of the 1930s, many desperate people left the Haight-Ashbury district to move into smaller, cheaper houses in the San Francisco Bay area. During the subsequent war years, many of the large houses in Haight-Ashbury were converted into apartments and boarding homes for people returning from overseas.

HAIGHT & ASHBURY SINCE THE 1950s
The 1950s saw the Haight-Ashbury district declining fast with most of the middleclass families selling up and leaving. But, in the 1960s, there was a renaissance when the Haight-Ashbury district became the centre of the hippie movement that led to the great “Summer of Love” in 1967 when Scott McKenzie sang “San Francisco” and asked people to wear flowers in their hair. Since that time, the Haight-Ashbury district has retained its hippie feel and is still a popular neighbourhood with West Coast counterculture.

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