Thousands of office workers cut through it every day without a second thought: Leidesdorff Street, a narrow alley running through the Financial District between Montgomery and Sansome. Its name honors William Alexander Leidesdorff (1810-1848), whom FoundSF calls San Francisco's most prominent early Black citizen.
Who he was
Born in the Danish West Indies, now the U.S. Virgin Islands, Leidesdorff arrived in 1841 as a ship's master from New Orleans, when the town was still called Yerba Buena. According to the National Park Service's ethnic historic site survey, he quickly built a warehouse on what was then the waterfront at California and Leidesdorff streets. In 1846 he erected the City Hotel at Clay and Kearny, the village's first public hotel of any note, on ground that is now Portsmouth Square. In 1847 he acquired and sailed the first steamer on San Francisco Bay.
He was also a public figure: U.S. vice consul under Mexican rule, then city treasurer, a councilman and a member of the school committee. He died in 1848 at 38, just as the Gold Rush was beginning, and is buried at Mission Dolores.
How to find him today
A bronze monument to Leidesdorff stands at Commercial and Leidesdorff streets. The Downtown SF Partnership has offered a walking tour of his 1840s San Francisco around his birthday in late October, starting near the Landing at Leidesdorff at 565 Commercial St. You can build your own: start at the monument, walk to California and Leidesdorff to picture the old shoreline, then head to Portsmouth Square, where the City Hotel stood until the fire of 1851.