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May 2023. By Britta Gustafson, CC BY-SA.

360 5th St is a vacant lot on 5th near Folsom St, between Shipley St and Clara St, that was excavated in 2019 and has been filling with water since construction stopped in 2020. A SF Chronicle article from September 2024 says "the abandoned property has become a blighted water-filled hole in the heart of the South of Market area."

A SF Gate article from May 2024 says "Exactly how the lot flooded is unclear. SFGATE contacted several city departments, including San Francisco Public Works, the Department of Building Inspection, and San Francisco Water, Power and Sewer. Officials at those agencies, who were each unaware of the flooded lot when they spoke with SFGATE, could only guess where the water came from...Rhodes said department staff suspects the flood is made up of groundwater."

According to the2013 Environment Impact Report next door at 233-237 Shipley St, "Groundwater is relatively shallow throughout the project site, approximately 9 feet [below ground surface]" (page 49). The abandoned construction site has an Environmental Impact Report from 2017 with a plan to excavate 12-14 feet deep and a comment from a neighbor (page 194): "Will you take care of drainage? There is trouble with drainage already in the neighborhood because there is a river running right through there. They have pumps operating at the building across the street."

Why?

The SOMA Historic Context Statement (2009) suggests an answer on page 15 — this was a marsh: "What is now the South of Market Area was by all accounts a beautiful place during the early days of Spanish and Mexican occupation...Looming to the south would have been Rincon Hill, studded in oaks and coastal scrub and rising over 150’ above San Francisco Bay...Moving westward from Rincon Hill, the traveler would eventually reach a large marsh in the area presently bounded by Mission, 4th, Folsom, and 10th streets. The marsh, which drained into Mission Bay via a network of creeks, was reportedly filled with thickets and droves of ducks and other waterfowl."

1852 U.S. Coastal Survey Map of San Francisco, from "San Francisco is Sinking" by Chris Carlsson. The blue star is the approximate location of this abandoned construction site.

The historic context statement notes that San Francisco's original street plan "initially ended at 5th Street, where it encountered vast tidal marshes (Figure 4)." From page 30: "The marshes at 4th Street prevented development from spreading much further toward the Mission during the 1850s and 1860s. Called an “impassable morass,” any person venturing to go any further than 4th Street would be, according so some, “likely to sink out of sight.” The only route around the marshes was on the plank roads that followed the alignment of present-day Mission and Folsom streets. Gradually, however, the steam paddies were brought to bear and the once pristine wetlands were filled with garbage, construction debris, and sand."

(The "steam paddies" were steam shovels.)

The following watershed map is from a story about a house down the block at 280 Shipley St in 1989, which also notes: "Every day at lunch time I would walk down Shipley to 5th and go to Harvey’s Café. Harvey’s was a famous hangout for bike messengers. Harvey Woo would loan them money or give them credit so they could eat when without funds. He had a big board behind his counter where he kept slips of paper with each person’s account."

This lot was part of the Hayes Creek marsh

Sunken neighbors

229-231 Shipley St, built in 1916. This was the longtime home of an artist. It sold in July 2024 and may get redeveloped. September 2021, by Britta Gustafson. CC BY-SA.

This block of Shipley St has several houses with their first floor below street level because they were built on sand and mud. As explained by this Nob Hill Gazette post, "After the 1906 quake the marshy land in the area continued to subside, causing streets and houses to sink as much as five or six feet."

In SF Gate: "The burned buildings were quickly demolished, new homes and offices constructed. But there is one part of the city where you can still find signs of the aftermath - the streets and alleys in a small area South of Market, between Fifth and Eighth streets and Mission and Brannan streets. This so-called subsidence zone is filled with off-kilter buildings, strange shifts in street level and, most dramatically, buildings whose first stories are almost entirely buried...One of the most dramatic buildings is found at 274 Shipley St., an alley between Howard and Folsom and Fifth and Sixth streets. The twin garages of this old red apartment house are well below street level: Only their top halves are above the sidewalk."

From a book with ideas for geological field trips in the Bay Area: "Many of the buildings on Clara Street have subsided several feet because of compaction of the loose unconsolidated sediments that underlie this part of the city. As the buildings subsided, Clara Street has been built up to maintain the original elevation...Other good places to see similar subsidence features are Shipley Street from Fifth Street to Sixth Street."

Google Street View of Shipley St at 5th St in March 2011, sunken and muddy eight years before excavation

Other previous things at 354 5th St and 210-212 Clara

In about 1948-1950: Reedart Rattan Manufacturing CompanyFrom the Environmental Impact Report from 2017 (page 162):

Review of historic maps shows the entire project block as fully developed with one- and two-story residences and commercial buildings on the 1887 and 1899 Sanborn maps. The area was then presumably destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, since a different configuration of four residences, two storefronts and a storage building are shown on the project site on the 1913 Sanborn map. The lot at the corner of Clara and Fifth streets was developed with the existing structure in 1945. Past commercial occupants have included a rattan furniture factory, a liquor store, and construction, window tinting, and design firms.

In the 2000s, it held an arts organization / Burning Man group that hosted things like:

In the 2010s, some small businesses leased space from the arts organization:

  • Wood Thumb (2015: "The Wood Thumb space, one of SoMa’s original warehouses, was previously inhabited by a Burning Man community, says Steinrueck. Once they were kicked out, the owners considered gutting the building to create new tech offices, but Steinrueck convinced them to save their money and rent it to Wood Thumb as-is. While he’s sure it’ll be razed for condos sooner rather than later, he’s pleased to be holding onto the tradition of manufacturing in SoMa for the time being.")
  • Oru Kayak
  • Lightsmith Laser
  • ...and a startup incubator / coworking space that hosted events such as a pre-launch presentation about Ethereum.

SF Examiner article from 2017 about displacement: "The site has been home to a 'dying breed' of creative space in the neighborhood since around 2003, artist Skot Kuiper of SPACE360 Studios said in an email. Kuiper at one point ran nearly the entire site as workshops and creative studios, but now shares the lots with a woodworking shop called Wood Thumb...Under last year’s voter-approved Proposition X, developers are required to replace industrial space they remove to preserve arts and manufacturing space in South of Market and the Mission. But there is no guarantee that the same artists can return and no requirement that developers provide relocation assistance."

See also

A local historian, Joel Pomerantz, has been teaching about SF's underground water for years: Seep City.

An artist, Kasey Smith, did a series of walking tours in this neighborhood in 2019 about ecology and invasive species and art, including a stop at this empty lot.

A Natural History of Empty Lots by Christopher Brown: "These were not pockets of 'wilderness' in the city, but they were pockets of wildness."

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