Union Square is the hinge of downtown San Francisco: the cable cars terminate here, the department stores ring it, and the theaters sit a block off it. The square itself is a stone plaza over a parking garage — but the streets around it carry a century of the city showing off.
Start at the Powell Street turnaround, where the cable cars are still spun by hand on a wooden turntable. Watch a turn, then walk up to the square and the Dewey Monument, the granite column that has stood since the city was an imperial port. The big retail blocks ring the plaza — go into Neiman Marcus for the salvaged glass rotunda overhead, then slip east into Maiden Lane.
This is the find. At 140 is the only Frank Lloyd Wright building in the city: a blank brick front with one arch, and a spiral ramp inside that he tried out before the Guggenheim. From there it's a short walk west to the theater corner, the Curran and the Geary facing off across the street. End back down Powell, the car still turning, with BART and Muni underneath.
