Ahead of you rises the Ferry Building, once the busiest transit hub west of the Mississippi and now one of the great urban food markets in America. The Ferry Building was completed in 1898, its 245-foot clock tower modeled on the Giralda tower in Seville, Spain. Before the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge were built in the 1930s, the only way to cross the bay was by ferry, and at its peak the Ferry Building processed 50,000 commuters a day on boats running to Oakland, Berkeley, Marin, and communities throughout the bay.
The clock tower's four faces, 22 feet in diameter, became the reference point by which San Franciscans set their watches. The 1906 earthquake stopped all four clocks at 5:12 a.m. When the bridges opened in 1936 and 1937, ferry ridership collapsed and the building was converted to offices.
The Embarcadero Freeway that opened in 1959 essentially buried it behind a concrete wall. After the freeway's removal following the 1989 earthquake, the building was restored and reopened as a marketplace in 2003, with an emphasis on Northern California food producers. The farmers market held three mornings a week outside the building is one of the finest in the country.
Ferries still run from the building to Oakland, Sausalito, and Larkspur.