Can you tell me was Pope Street ever called Pius Street. I have a postcard from a great aunt dated 1913. The address on the card is 1722 Pius Street SF.

-- Michael Davis (brummie@direcpc.com), April 03, 2002

Answers

I seriously doubt it for several reasons. First of all, Pope Street was not named for a Pope. It was named for a general in the civil war who later became the commander general of the California area. It would not have made sense to make a name change from Pius Street to Pope street because the continunity of the context of the name would not have made sense knowing the Pope name represented a general. Secondly, often times, streets with religious names are usually found in religious areas and there is nothing all that religious about the Pope street area. Also, the church is very picky about having religious street names changed and you could bet there would have been some issues raised about that which city hall would not have wanted to get involved in. Finally, I'm not even all that sure when that Geneva district area of San Francisco had its streets put it but I would guess that it must have been no earlier than the late 1890s to early 1900s and as I have seen the Pope Street name on early maps in the early 1900s, before 1913 date of the postcard, I don't see how Pope street could have been named Pius street before that time.

-- Harry Murphy (harrymurphy@bigmailbox.net*), April 03, 2002.