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By the Golden Gate by Joseph Carey
page 63 of 163 (38%)
The streets of the city by the Golden Gate have an interesting
nomenclature, which well deserves one's study for what it teaches.
Some streets in the triangular section of San Francisco, already
spoken of, are numbered. These begin west of Fremont street and run
up to Thirteenth, being bounded by Market street. Then the numbered
streets take a turn to the left hand and go from Fourteenth to
Twenty-Sixth, in the southwestern section of the city, and run due
west. Numbers on the streets of any city are of course a convenience,
but such a nomenclature has nothing else to commend it, and lacks
imagination and sacrifices bits of history which may be interwoven
with municipal life and show progress from small beginnings and
perpetuate pioneers' names and benefactors' memories. Modern Athens
in naming her streets has very wisely called them after some of the
demigods, heroes, generals, statesmen, and poets of Greece; and
grateful too for the work of Lord Byron in behalf of her independence,
she has honoured him who in immortal song spurred on her sons to
arise and cast off the Turkish yoke, with a name on one of her
thorough-fares--Hodos Tou Buronos--which the traveller reads with
emotion, even as he gazes also with admiration on the beautiful
Pentelic monument reared to the memory of her benefactor, near the
Arch of Hadrian, while Athenae is represented as crowning him with the
victorious olive. With feelings and sentiments akin to this the sons
of the Golden West have associated forever with the streets of their
great city the names of men who either benefited California or take
high rank in national life or are otherwise worthy of perpetual
commemoration. Hence we have a Berkeley street, a Buchanan, a Castro,
a Fillmore, a Franklin, a Fremont, a Grant, a Hancock, a Harrison,
a Hawthorne, and a Humboldt street. Juniper street is a memorial of
Father Junipero Serra, founder of Franciscan Missions. Kepler takes
us up to the stars, which shine beautifully over the lofty Sierras,
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