Photos

I was at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and just stepped out of the park to take a photo of Fulton Street looking east. Here you see the Muni Metro system and in the distance on the hill is Saint Ignatius Church. Below is information on both I got from Wikipedia. Have a great weekend everyone!!..........................Buddy

Muni Metro

Muni Metro is a premetro system serving San Francisco, California, operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), a division of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). With an average weekday ridership of 162,400 passengers, Muni Metro is the second-busiest light rail system in the United States.

Muni Metro is the modern incarnation of the traditional streetcar system that had served San Francisco since the late 19th century. While many streetcar lines in other cities and San Francisco itself were converted to buses after World War II, five lines survived until the 1970s, when the streetcar lines were converted to light rail during the opening of the Market Street Subway in 1980. Recently, the system had undergone expansion, most notably the Third Street Light Rail Project, completed in 2007, which started the first new rail line in San Francisco in over half a century. Other projects, such as the Central Subway, are underway.

The system consists of 71.5 miles (115.1 km) of standard gauge track, seven light rail lines (six regular lines and one peak-hour line), three tunnels, nine subway stations, twenty-four surface stations, and eighty-seven surface stops. Muni Metro utilizes a fleet of 151 light rail vehicles (LRV) made by Breda.

Saint Ignatius Church

Saint Ignatius Church is a church on the campus of the University of San Francisco in San Francisco, California, USA. The church serves a parish of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco and is the university's chapel. Saint Ignatius Church is staffed by priests of the Society of Jesus and is dedicated to the Society's founder, Ignatius of Loyola.

The present Saint Ignatius Church is the fifth such church to be built in San Francisco. Its history runs parallel to that of USF: the very first Saint Ignatius was built in 1855 as a small wood-frame church beside a schoolhouse that became Saint Ignatius Academy, USF's predecessor. The Market Street location was later rebuilt as a larger brick church which attracted many of San Francisco's Catholics away from established parishes. This led to a dispute between Saint Ignatius' first pastor, Father Anthony Maraschi, S.J. and Archbishop Joseph Alemany which resulted in the archdiocese stripping Saint Ignatius of its parish status in 1863.

The third Saint Ignatius Church was built, along with Saint Ignatius College, in 1880. The church and college moved from Market Street to the corner of Hayes Street and Van Ness Avenue, on a site now occupied by the Davies Symphony Hall. Compared to the first two churches, the third church could accommodate 4,000 worshippers and was arguably the grandest. However, the third church and college only lasted 25 years as both were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire.

After the earthquake and fire, the college was hastily re-built on Hayes Street, a few miles west of old Van Ness Avenue site. A rambling wooden structure, the high school portion of the new complex was known as "The Shirt Factory" and the buildings would stay there for some two decades. However, the church itself was eventually re-built in 1912 two blocks north on Fulton Street at the corner of Parker Ave., and the fifth Saint Ignatius Church was dedicated in 1914. It has continued to serve as the university's chapel, and in 1994, the Archdiocese of San Francisco reinstated Saint Ignatius' status as a parish, serving the surrounding neighborhood.

The present church's architecture is a mix of Italian Renaissance and Baroque elements, and its floorplan follows that of ancient Roman basilicas. Though Saint Ignatius Church survived the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake unscathed, it was recently renovated and seismically reinforced. One of the city's largest churches, its location on a hilltop as well as its twin spires and dome makes it a prominent San Francisco landmark.