The city's heart can be found around Union Square , located north of Market Street and bordered by Powell and Stockton streets. Cable cars clank past bustling shoppers and theater-goers who gravitate to the district's many upscale hotels, department stores and boutiques. The statue in the center commemorates Admiral Dewey's success in the Spanish-American War, though the square takes its name from its role as gathering place for stumping speechmakers during the US Civil War. (The woman who posed for the monument became a local celebrity, marrying into the wealthy Spreckels family.) The square witnessed the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford outside the (now Westin) St Francis Hotel in 1975, and was also the location of Francis Ford Coppola's film The Conversation , where Gene Hackman spied on strolling lovers. Many of Dashiell Hammett's detective stories, such as The Maltese Falcon , are set partly in the St Francis , in which he worked as a Pinkerton detective during the Twenties. Hammett fans should check out John's Grill , 63 Ellis St, for Sam Spade's favorite eating spot (though it probably won't be yours), and Burritt Alley , two blocks north of the square on Bush Street, near Stockton Street. Here's where Spade's partner, Miles Archer, met his end, shot by Brigid O'Shaughnessy. A plaque marks the spot.

On Geary Street, on the south side of the square, the Theater District is a pint-sized Broadway of restaurants, tourist hotels and serious and "adult" theaters. On the eastern side of the square, Maiden Lane is a chic urban walkway that before the 1906 earthquake and fire was one of the city's roughest areas, where homicides averaged around ten a month. Nowadays, aside from some prohibitively expensive boutiques, its main feature is San Francisco's only Frank Lloyd Wright building (now occupied by the Xanadu Tribal Art Gallery), an intriguing circular space which was a try-out for the Guggenheim in New York.

Union Square

• Union Square
• Cable cars

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