Castro District, San Francisco, CA Real Estate, Noe Valley, San Francisco, CA Homes, Saint Francis Wood, San Francisco, CA Investment Property

The Sunset District

The Sunset District is a sprawling, mostly residential neighborhood located directly south of Golden Gate Park. The largest district in San Francisco, and one of the last areas of the City to be originally developed, many of the homes and buildings in this neighborhood were built between the 1920s and the 1950s, with the vast majority of construction taking place during the 1930s and '40s. Like its neighbor the Richmond District, which flanks Golden Gate Park from the north, the Sunset District has been divided into several sections: "Inner Sunset," "Central Sunset" and "Outer Sunset" (the areas that comprise the northern half of the district), and "Inner Parkside," "Central Parkside" and "Outer Parkside" (the southern half of the district). An area southwest of the Inner Sunset and northeast of the Inner Parkside forms yet another sub-district known as "Golden Gate Heights." Also like the Richmond, the Sunset District is close to the Pacific Ocean (indeed, the ocean serves as the western border for both the Outer Sunset and Outer Parkside neighborhoods); for this reason, the area tends to be blanketed foggy during the morning and early afternoon hours, especially during the summer.

Inner Sunset

Immediately south of Golden Gate Park, the Inner Sunset runs east/west from 2nd Avenue to 19th Avenue/Highway 1, and north/south predominantly from Lincoln Way to Ortega Streets. (A winding, hilly area in the southwest section of the neighborhood, running north/south from Lawton Street to approximately Ortega Street, and east/west from 11th Avenue to 16th Avenue, forms the northern half of a separate district known as Golden Gate Heights.) Though mostly residential, the Inner Sunset has a thriving commercial area centered around Irving Street between 7th and 11th Avenues. Once a bastion of mom-and-pop stores and locally owned Laundromats, the face of the neighborhood changed in the late 1990s around the time of the dot-com boom, when young transplants with disposable income began settling in the area from across the U.S. The Inner Sunset is also a popular evening destination, with a diverse mix of restaurants along 9th Avenue and Irving Street, as well as live music in many Irish pubs scattered throughout the neighborhood. Golden Gate Park's Strybing Arboretum is just within the 9th Avenue and Lincoln Way entrance, while the N Judah streetcar provides commuters with a direct route downtown. 19th Way/California Highway 1 provides access to Marin County due north (by way of the Golden Gate Bridge