Tours of the Tales

Lower Filbert Steps

Lower Filbert Steps (between Montgomery and Sansome street)

Except at the very end at the edge of Telegraph Hill, most of this section of the Filbert Steps is wooden.  

The lush gardens you encounter as you descend the Filbert Steps have their genesis in 1949 by the hands of a feisty 63-year old woman, Grace Marchant.  When she moved into the cottage at the corner of Napier Lane and the Filbert Steps (below on this tour), trash and garbage filled the empty space where the gardens are now located.  She began to plant greenery in that trash strewn space.  Soon the residents of Telegraph Hill helped her convert the trash heap to the gardens you now see.  This garden is now called the Grace Marchant Garden.  It is privately maintained by the residents of Telegraph Hill.

Grace’s ashes are buried beneath a small statue hidden in the greenery near where Napier Lane joins the Filbert Steps.

Armistead Maupin was at one time a neighbor of Grace living two doors up from her on this lower part of the Filbert Steps.  Once, Grace teased Maupin about one of their new neighbors.  Maupin tells us who that neighbor was in his autobiography, Logical Family.  You’ll see Grace’s and Maupin’s residences in a few moments.  

As mentioned above, Mary Ann and Simon descended the Filbert steps.  Simon commented on how magnificent the gardens were.  Mary Ann pointed out that the City of San Francisco was not responsible for establishing and maintaining the gardens.  Mary Ann went on to tell him about Grace Marchant.  Simon remarked that Mary Ann was a “font of local color.”  She explained that she had done a story on Grace.  Simon teased her with, “Do you do stories on everyone you know?”  She soon learned that Simon had once escorted Princess Diana to a David Bowie concert.  (Babycakes/Back to Barbary Lane, p 111.)