Lombard Street's west end is at Presidio Boulevard inside the
Presidio; it then heads east through the
Cow Hollow neighborhood. For 12 blocks, between Broderick Street and
Van Ness Avenue, it is an
arterial road that is co-signed as
U.S. Route 101. Lombard Street continues through the
Russian Hill neighborhood and to the
Telegraph Hill neighborhood. At Telegraph Hill it turns south, becoming Telegraph Hill Boulevard to Pioneer Park and
Coit Tower. Lombard Street starts again at Winthrop Street and ends at
The Embarcadero as a
collector road. Lombard Street is known for the one-way block on
Russian Hill between Hyde and Leavenworth streets, where eight sharp turns are said to make it the most crooked street in the world. The design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and built in 1922, was intended to reduce the hill's natural 27 percent grade, which was too steep for most vehicles. The crooked block is about long ( straight line), is one-way (downhill) and is paved with red bricks. The sign at the top recommends . The segment normally sees around 250 vehicles per hour, with
average daily traffic reaching 2,630 vehicles in 2013. The Powell-Hyde
cable car stops at the top of the block on Hyde Street. By 2017, the area around the curved segment had become a hot-spot of what has been described as "San Francisco's car break-in epidemic." This may in part have been due to its heavy traffic and association with tourism. The
Academy of Art University owns and operates a building called Star Hall on the street for housing purposes. Past residents of Lombard Street include
Rowena Meeks Abdy, an early California painter who worked in the style of
Impressionism. Chase scenes in many films have been filmed on the street, including
Good Neighbor Sam, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, ''
What's Up, Doc?,
and Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Lombard Street is also portrayed in the 2015 Pixar film Inside Out, and is referenced by Bill Cosby on his 1965 comedy album Why Is There Air?''. ==Major intersections==