The Mission Valley district, south-west of the centre, is primarily a Hispanic community, and much of the Western Addition, west of Van Ness Avenue, is a black area. Other major neighbourhoods are Chinatown and Japan Town.
The downtown section of San Francisco has many attractions. Particularly notable are the Transamerica Pyramid Building (1972); Chinatown, which has one of the largest Chinese communities outside Asia; and Coit Memorial Tower on Telegraph Hill. Also in the centre is Fisherman's Wharf, with the nearby Hyde Street Pier of Historic Ships and the National Maritime Museum, and the Ferry Building, which houses the Geological Museum. The Civic Centre includes City Hall, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Opera House, and the Davies Symphony Hall. San Francisco also has a major hands-on science museum, the Exploratorium. The central district of San Francisco is also noted for its cable cars, which were returned to operation in the mid-1980s after several years of repair. Golden Gate Park, including a large area in the west-central part of the city that is designated to become a national park in 1994, is the site of the M. H. De Young Memorial Museum, noted for its exhibits of Far Eastern art; the California Academy of Sciences museum; and the Japanese Tea Gardens. South of the central area are the Mexican Museum, which contains a folk-art collection; Mission Dolores (founded 1776); the George Moscone Convention Center; and Candlestick Park, home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team and the San Francisco 49ers American football team. The main institutions of higher education in San Francisco are San Francisco State University (1889), the University of San Francisco (1855), Golden Gate University (1901), University of California-San Francisco (1864), the University of California Hastings College of Law (1878), the San Francisco Art Institute (1871), and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (1917). San Francisco has many performing-arts organizations. Among the best known are the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, and the American Conservatory Theatre.
The community was settled in 1776, when the Spanish founded a fort (presidio) here to guard the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Later that year the Misión San Francisco de Asís (now called Mission Dolores) was established nearby. In the 1830s a third settlement began at Yerba Buena Cove, in the north-eastern part of the city. The United States took Yerba Buena from Mexico in 1846, renaming it San Francisco in 1847.