Once cut off from the rest of San Francisco by the double-decker Embarcadero Freeway - damaged in the 1989 earthquake and finally torn down in 1991 - the Ferry Building , at the foot of Market Street, was modeled on the cathedral tower in Seville, Spain. Before the bridges were built in the 1930s it was the arrival point for fifty thousand cross-bay commuters daily. A few ferries still dock here, but the characterless office units inside do little to suggest its former importance. The area in front of the Ferry Building is the site of the much-loved Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market (Tues 11am-3pm, Sat 8am-1.30pm), a great place to buy or merely gawk at the colorful local produce.
Since the freeway was pulled down, the area around it, known as The Embarcadero , has experienced a dramatic renaissance - from an area of charmless office blocks into a swanky waterfront district with the city's most fashionable restaurants and hotels springing up beside palm trees and views of the bay.
From the vast and unimaginative Embarcadero Center shopping mall and the fountains of Justin Herman Plaza at the foot of Market it's a few blocks down to Montgomery Street , where the grand pillared entrances and banking halls of the post-1906 earthquake buildings era jostle for attention with a mixed bag of modern towers. For a hands-on grasp of modern finance, the World of Economics Gallery in the Federal Reserve Bank , 101 Market St (Mon-Fri 9am-6pm), is unbeatable: computer games allow you to engineer your own inflationary disasters, while exhibits detail recent scandals and triumphs. The Wells Fargo History Museum , 420 Montgomery St (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm; free), traces the far-from-slick origins of San Francisco's big money, right from the days of the Gold Rush, with mining equipment, gold nuggets, photographs, and a genuine retired stagecoach. Tucked discreetly in a nondescript building at 121 Steuart St is the little-known Jewish Museum San Francisco ($5, free first Mon of month and Thurs 6-8pm; Sun-Wed 11am-5pm, Thurs 11am-8pm), which, far from being the somber trudge through history its name suggests, has an impressive collection of contemporary work by Jewish artists. The museum will be moving to a new building in Yerba Buena Gardens in 2003.
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