This Stick-Eastlake residence was originally located three blocks away at 1686-1690 Post Street. Along with its neighbors, it was moved here in 1978 when the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) was bulldozing much of the Western Addition.

Jimbo's Bop City operated from 1950 to 1965 in this building when it was still on Post Street. Bop City hosted Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and many others. Jimbo's Bop City, open between the hours of 2AM and 6AM, fostered the mingling of established musicians and amateurs, as well as a tolerance of social racial integration that was progressive for its time.

Its closure in 1965 was a result of changes in the music scene and in the surrounding neighborhood, which was devastated both residentially and economically by the actions of the SFRA.

Marcus Books moved into this building in 1980 after all of its previous locations were demolished by the SFRA.

Julian and Raye Richardson had established Success Printing Co. in 1947. Renamed Marcus Books in 1960, it was a space of Black community collectivity, empowerment and action. Changes on the local, national, and global scale throughout the 1960s and 1970s were experienced, addressed, adjusted to, discussed, and in many cases rejected from within the walls of this bookstore. Marcus Books was a haven for Black intellectualism in San Francisco.

Source: San Francisco Landmark Designation Report

Marcus Books was evicted from this building in 2014. At that time, it was the nation's oldest continuously operating Black-owned and Black-themed bookstore.

Before World War II, this was a Japanese-American neighborhood. In 1942, when Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camps, the neighborhood became predominantly African-American.

Buildings that Moved

It's not just that the people of the American West are restless, the buildings themselves sometimes pack up and move when - for one reason or another - the neighborhood no longer suits them or the neighbors no longer want them or opportunity waits down the road.

And when buildings remain in place, they are often searching for their identities.

Of the buildings and structures we have visited, the original Reno Arch holds the record for number of moves. It has been moved five times since it was built in 1926.

Jax Truckee Diner holds the distance title. The building moved from New Jersry to Pennsylvanis in 1948, then from Pennsylvania to Califonia in 1992.

Probably the most ambitious relocation occurred on July 4th 1904, when the Southern Pacific Railroad loaded most of the town of Wadsworth, Nevada, onto rail cars and transported the town thirty miles west to create a new town which became known as Sparks.