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 view of the city and bay. The site of the city is very hilly and is completely dominated by a line of high rocky elevations that run like a crescent-formed background from N.E. to S.W. across the peninsula, culminating in the S.W. in the Twin Peaks (Las Papas, “The Breasts”), 925 ft. high. Telegraph Hill in the extreme N.E., the site in 1849 of the criminal settlement called “Sydney Town” and later known as the “Latin Quarter,” is 294 ft. high; Nob Hill, where the railway and mining “kings” of the 'sixties and 'seventies of the 19th century built their homes, which only in recent years has lost its exclusiveness, is 300 ft. high; Pacific Heights, which became the site of a fashionable quarter, is still higher; and in Golden Gate Park there is Strawberry Hill, 426 ft. Hilly as it remains to-day, the site was once much more so, and has been greatly changed by man. Great hills were razed and tumbled into the bay for the gain of land; others were pierced with cuts, to conform to street grades and to the checker-board city plan adopted in the early days. An effort to induce the city to adopt, in the rebuilding after the earthquake of 1906, an artistic plan failed, and reconstruction followed practically the old plan of streets, although the buildings which had marked them had been for the most part obliterated. Some minor suggestions for improvement in arrangement only were observed. Cable lines were first practically tested in San Francisco, in 1873; since the earthquake they have given place, with slight exceptions, to electric car lines. A drive of some 20 m. may be taken along the ocean front, through the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, and a series of handsome streets in the west end. Market Street, the principal business street, is more than 3 m. long and 120 ft. broad. For nearly its full extent, excepting the immediate water-front, and running westward to Van Ness Avenue, a distance of 2 m., the buildings lining it on both sides and covering the adjoining area, a total of some 2000 acres, or 514 blocks, equivalent to of the city plan, were reduced to ruins in the fire following the earthquake; only a few large buildings of so-called “fire-proof” construction remained standing on the street, and these had their interiors completely “gutted.” Repairs on the buildings left standing on this street alone involved an outlay of $5,000,000. Almost the whole of this area was built up again by 1910. As the result of the reconstruction of this section, thousands of wooden buildings, which had been a striking architectural characteristic of the city, were replaced by structures of steel, brick, and, especially, reinforced concrete. Before the earthquake wood had been employed to a large extent, partly because of the accessibility, cheapness and general excellence of redwood, but also because of the belief that it was better suited to withstand earthquake shocks. While the wooden buildings were little damaged by the shocks, the comparative non-inflammability of redwood proved no safeguard and fire swept the affected area irresistibly. In 1900 only one-thirteenth of the buildings in the city were of other material than wood. Of the 28,000 buildings destroyed in the disaster of 1906, valued approximately at $105,000,000, only 5000 were such as had involved steel, stone or brick in their construction. The new buildings, on which an estimated amount of $150,000,000 had been expended up to April 1909, and numbering 25,000 at that date, were built under stringent city ordinances governing the methods of building employed, to reduce the danger from fire to a minimum. The use of reinforced concrete as a building material received a special impetus in consequence. In size and value the new buildings generally exceed their predecessors, buildings eight to eighteen storeys in height being characteristic in the Market Street section. Owing to the complete reconstruction of its business section San Francisco is equalled by few cities in the possession of office and business buildings of the most modern type.