Piazza St. Francis, The Poet’s Plaza

It is not often that a metropolitan city like San Francisco has the opportunity to incorporate a new urban piazza in the center of one of its most historic districts.  That would be a rare opportunity indeed!  It does appear this vision is turning into a reality for San Francisco’s beloved North Beach.

Recently, I spoke with Angela Alioto, San Francisco attorney and former President of the City’s Board of Supervisors, and there is much good news to report on Piazza St. Francis, The Poet’s Plaza.

The vision for the project actually began several years ago when Alioto, the driving force behind this undertaking and financing, spearheaded the reconstruction of the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi as part of “The Renaissance Project” in 1997.

The effort began with the replication of the Porziuncola Nuova the small chapel where St. Francis took refuge at Assisi in 1226. The chapel is adjacent to the Church of St. Francis and the project will continue with construction of the piazza.

The piazza would replace the portion of Vallejo Street on the 600 block that runs in front of the National Shrine of Saint Francis, and adjacent rectory. Café Trieste will anchor the southeast corner of the piazza. Francis Ford Coppola worked on his screenplay for the “The Godfather” in Café Trieste, the historic coffeehouse that has been the gathering place of poets, writers, artists, and filmmakers since 1956.

Piazza Saint Francis, The Poets Plaza, is a civic project created by neighborhood volunteers and donations. The Chinatown Community Development Center, North Beach Merchants Association, Telegraph Hill Dwellers, North Beach Citizens, and hundreds of local residents have offered their qualified support of the project.  The Mayor’s office, City Planning Department and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have been, and continue to be very enthusiastic about the concept.

Quotations from some 30 great poets will be engraved in the paving of the piazza, and the circle of Peacemakers will be white granite with their names in big brass letters!  The beloved piazzas of Italy, specifically Umbria, provided inspiration for this traffic-free-zone and will be an essential link between the neighborhood and major thoroughfare.

Piazza Saint Francis is a non-profit endeavor to create an oasis for San Franciscans and a national site for lovers of poetry, music, art, and specifically Peace, just as the piazzas in Italy. The piazza pavement itself will be Italian green and white granite that would form stripes running north-to-south along pedestrian-only Vallejo Street.  Red stone benches would provide seating for poetry readings and cappuccino sipping.

One of San Francisco’s literary icons, poet, painter, publisher and founder of San Francisco’s landmark City Lights Bookstore, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, also had a vision for transforming a small block of Vallejo Street in the city’s historic North Beach.  Ferlinghetti founded the Piazza Saint Francis Foundation to work with Alioto and the San Francisco Planning Department, and many others. It has been a joint effort of Love and Peace for the City and North beach in particular!

San Francisco architects, Bry Sarte, and Dennis Sullivan are the design leaders for Poets Plaza and Fred Warnecke is the landscape designer.  Nibbi Brothers is the construction team, led by Project Manager Alfonso Rocciola.  Sullivan has described the piazza as “a convivial, traffic free, public gathering place – with stone chess tables, park benches, flowering plants, and umbrellas set on a tiled pavement, incised with quotations from poets worldwide.”

As illustrated by Art Zendarski’s rendering, the piazza will be a lovely urban oasis.  Several one-hundred-year-old olive trees adjacent to the rectory will line the northeast side and seating areas will combine with park benches to provide residents and visitors the quintessentially quaint San Francisco experience.

Piazza St. Francis is not the first historic event to take place on this tiny block of Vallejo Street.   This location was making history all the way back to the days when Columbus Avenue was called Montgomery Avenue, a dusty dirt road connecting the City’s early business district established around Montgomery Street with the growing residential areas of San Francisco’s Little Italy.

In those early days, the strip of land between Russian and Telegraph Hills was often referred to as Columbus Valley and was the location of one of the first churches established in San Francisco, the Church of St. Francis at the corner of Vallejo and Columbus, then Montgomery, which is now the national Shrine of Saint Francis.

The original church was a modest wooden structure rebuilt in 1860 in the present Norman Gothic architecture only to be almost completely destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire.  Only the church’s brick walls and towers remained.  Within those ravaged walls, a new church was built and rededicated in 1919.   Now St. Francis of Assisi Church is officially designated San Francisco Landmark No. 5.

So you see, the location of the new piazza will continue the decades-long tradition of peace and goodwill among people.  It will be a new meeting place for those wishing to take a respite from hectic urban living, a place to meet with friends, a place to make new friends.  Piazza St. Francis will be a place of contemplation, rest and rejuvenation, and a place for gathering together and a place to ponder the meaning of life.

Looking to the future, 2016 will be the 800-year anniversary of the pardon of St. Francis.  There are plans to hold a celebration in Piazza St. Francis to honor that event and to commemorate 2016 World Peace Week. World Peace Day, officially The International Day of Peace, is observed annually on September 21.

It is dedicated to world peace, specifically to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples.   What better place to honor peace than Piazza St. Francis!  Look forward to the project’s groundbreaking day in June of 2015 with opening day projected for February 2016.

For more information about Piazza St. Francis check the project website at http://www.piazzasf.org/ and the Knights of St. Francis website at http://www.knightsofsaintfrancis.com.  If you wish to contribute to the non-profit vision of the Piazza, you can use PayPal on line or please send donations to Piazza Saint Francis/Knights of Saint Francis, at 700 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA, 94111.