The square itself
It was a sand dune. John Geary, the city's first American mayor, set the land aside as a public plaza in 1850 and had it laid out, and the name has nothing to do with trade unions — it comes from the pro-Union rallies held on it by Thomas Starr King before and during the American Civil War.
The square is bounded by Geary, Powell, Post and Stockton, and the monument in the middle is the Dewey Monument, dedicated in 1903. It commemorates Admiral George Dewey's victory at Manila Bay in 1898 and doubles as a memorial to President McKinley, assassinated two years before it went up. The bronze figure of Victory on top, by Robert Aitken, stands a little under three metres on a column that brings the whole thing to around thirty.
The model for that figure was Alma de Bretteville — then a stenographer and artist's model, later the wife of a sugar magnate and the founder of the Legion of Honor. Anyone who visits both has seen the same woman twice.
The oddest thing about the square is not visible at all. Between 1939 and 1941 Timothy Pflueger built a car park underneath it — the first underground car park anywhere in the world — which means the lawns, the shrubs, the hedges and the Dewey Monument all sit on a roof. That is why the plaza is raised above the pavement and arranged in terraces rather than sloping naturally.
It was rebuilt between late 2000 and July 2002, a renovation that traded a good deal of grass for paving, steps and café space. Opinions on the result have always been divided.
The state of the shopping district, plainly
This is the part no older account can supply, and it matters because Union Square's entire reputation rests on retail.
Downtown San Francisco emptied out after 2020 and this district took the worst of it. Nordstrom left the shopping centre on Market Street; the centre itself was handed back to its lenders and closed. Bloomingdale's shut its store there. Saks gave up its space. Macy's announced in February 2024 that it would leave Union Square altogether, then reversed course in November 2025, saying it would stay and redevelop its block — roughly fifty-six thousand square metres between Geary and O'Farrell, in partnership with TMG Partners, with the eventual mix of uses still undecided.
The figures, as of spring 2026:
- Retail vacancy around the square was about 15 per cent in April 2026 — down from a peak of 22 per cent during 2025, but against 6.4 per cent in 2019.
- The Powell Street corridor, the walk up from the cable car turnaround, stood at 71 per cent retail vacancy during 2025.
- Downtown office vacancy is around 28 per cent, against four to six per cent in 2019 — which is the underlying cause, since the shops were serving office workers who no longer arrive five days a week.
It is recovering, and the mechanism is straightforward: rents have fallen by as much as thirty per cent, which has started pulling tenants back and allowed existing ones to upgrade their sites, with Zara, Uniqlo and Chanel all moving within the district. The city has set up a fund to help businesses that cannot afford downtown leases and is rebuilding the Powell Street corridor using money from a bond approved by voters in 2024. One commercial agent working the area has declared the nightmare over and expects a full rebound within about two years; the mayor describes the recovery as fragile. Both positions are defensible.
What this means in practice for a visitor. Union Square is still the obvious base for a stay — the hotels, the transport and the theatres are all here — but it is no longer the reason to come. Anyone whose trip is built around shopping will find more life in Hayes Valley or along Fillmore Street. Anyone here for the city should still walk through, for what stands around the square rather than what is in it.
One further note, since it surprises people: the theatre district immediately west runs straight into the Tenderloin, and the transition happens in the space of a block or two. It is not gradual, and visitors who wander west from Geary Street without knowing that are often taken aback.
What to look at
- The Westin St Francis, 1904, the only hotel standing on the square itself, and the one with the glass lifts running up the outside of the tower.
- The Beacon Grand, 450 Powell. This is the former Sir Francis Drake Hotel, which opened in 1928 — not 1904, as is sometimes reported. Kimpton reconsidered the name in 2020 because of Drake's involvement in the slave trade, and the hotel reopened as the Beacon Grand in June 2022. The room on the twenty-first floor, for decades the Starlight Room and renamed Lizzie's Starlight in 2019, is still the best place near the square to sit with a drink and look at the city. The hotel's doorman Tom Sweeney stood outside in a red Beefeater uniform from the 1970s until he retired in 2020, and was photographed more often than most of the landmarks.
- The theatres, one block west on Geary: the Geary and the Curran. The American Conservatory Theater performs at the Geary, and its facade is worth a look whatever is playing. Discounted same-day tickets are now sold online rather than from a booth on the square.
- 140 Maiden Lane — the only Frank Lloyd Wright building in San Francisco, and the single most overlooked thing in the district. Wright remodelled an existing 1911 building in 1948 and 1949 as the V.C. Morris Gift Shop, and gave it a spiral ramp rising under a circular skylight: the Guggenheim's central idea, executed a decade before the Guggenheim opened in New York. It is now an Italian menswear shop and admits visitors by appointment only, so arriving on the off chance will not work. The brick front with its arched tunnel of a doorway can be seen from the lane, which is pedestrianised and pleasant in its own right.
Getting there
Both Powell Street cable car lines, the Powell-Mason and the Powell-Hyde, begin and end at the turnaround at Powell and Market, a block south of the square. The queue there is long for most of the day, and boarding at a stop further along the line is frequently quicker — although cars arriving full will not stop.
Beneath Market Street, Powell Street station serves both BART and the Muni Metro. The newer arrival is Union Square/Market Street station, opened on 19 November 2022 as part of the Central Subway and served by the T Third line since January 2023; its southern end connects through to the Powell Street mezzanine. The line runs north to Chinatown, which makes it the quickest way between the two — and it is recent enough that no older guidebook mentions it at all.
General practicalities for the city, including the Clipper card and the weather, are on the San Francisco page.