Washington Square (San Francisco)
In the 19th century, the area was used by the Mexican rancher Juana Briones to grow potatoes and raise cattle, before it was designated a city square in 1847 when surveyor Jasper O'Farrell laid out San Francisco's street grid.The avenue was built, evidently, because business and banking interests in the Financial District wanted greater interaction with North Beach, which was isolated, geographically, by the hills, the Barbary Coast, and Chinatown.It was home for a year for some 600 people who lived in wooden barracks and Army tents after the 1906 earthquake and fire.Landscape architects Francis McCarthy and Douglas Baylis put Lombardy poplar trees in the center of a grassy expanse encircled by paths lined with benches, the configuration seen today.Peter and Paul Church and the nearby Dante Building, as settings of sniper attacks by the "Scorpio Killer", in the 1971 film Dirty Harry.