Ghirardelli Square ranks among America's first great examples of urban industrial reinvention. The brick buildings surrounding you were built starting in 1852 as the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, founded by Domingo Ghirardelli, a confectioner from Genoa who came to California during the Gold Rush. He had initially come to mine gold, sold candy to miners instead, and discovered that feeding a boomtown was more reliably profitable than digging in the dirt.
The company grew to become one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the country, and these red brick factory buildings — built in stages over 70 years — became a landmark of the waterfront. When the company moved its operations to a larger facility in the 1960s, the buildings were scheduled for demolition. A group of civic-minded investors, including the family of William Roth, purchased them and converted them into a pioneering festival marketplace of shops, restaurants, and public space.
Ghirardelli Square opened in 1964 and became the model for similar projects across the country, from Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace to Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The original chocolate machinery is still on display inside. The square faces the bay with a view that has not changed since the factory was built.