San Francisco’s cable car system grew around the Ferries and Cliff House Railway Company, also called the Powell Street Railway, which built a powerhouse and carbarn at Washington and Mason streets in 1887. Cable car service on Powell Street began on March 28, 1888, with full service on the Powell-Mason line starting a few days later, and the company also opened the Powell-Jackson line to the city’s Western Addition, where it connected at California Street with a steam train to the ocean that began service that July. In 1893 the company became a division of the 2nd Market Street Railway Co., and in 1902 those properties passed into the United Railroads of San Francisco, which operated until bankruptcy led to reorganization in April 1921 under the Market Street Railway name; after renewed failure, San Francisco voters approved city purchase in May 1945, and the system came to be operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway. The Washington-Mason building, originally built in 1887, was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, rebuilt afterward, refurbished in 1967, and almost entirely rebuilt again in 1982-84 during a system-wide rehabilitation project, while retaining its traditional appearance. Today it functions as a cable car barn and powerhouse for the Powell, Mason, Hyde, and California cables, and also as a historical museum devoted to the only working cable car system in the world. The carbarn stores and maintains the cars on its second floor, where a motorized shunter moves them from a turntable to 12 storage tracks, while on the ground floor the powerhouse runs four cables in continuous loops around large sheaves, powered by electric motors after conversion from steam in 1911. The system was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964, and the museum and observation areas were created to preserve and present the history of San Francisco’s cable cars and public transportation legacy.
