Before it was Portsmouth Square, it was La Plaza -- the central gathering place of Yerba Buena, the small Mexican settlement that preceded San Francisco. Originally known as Plaza de Yerba Buena, the square served as the civic heart of the village. When Montgomery claimed the territory, he renamed it after his ship, the USS Portsmouth. The square quickly became the center of Gold Rush-era San Francisco: gambling halls, saloons, and the first hotels surrounded it. The Jenny Lind Theatre stood on one side. The first city hall was nearby. As the city grew southward and westward, the center of gravity shifted, but Portsmouth Square retained its historical weight.

By the late 19th century, Chinatown had grown up around Portsmouth Square, and the plaza became the community's primary public space. Today, at just over 57,000 square feet, the square serves as playground, gathering place, and social club for Chinatown's residents. Children play on the structures while elderly men play Chinese chess on the stone tables. The park sits above the Portsmouth Square Garage, a parking structure built beneath it in the 1960s, connected to the Hilton Hotel across Kearny Street by a pedestrian bridge. The Robert Louis Stevenson monument marks the Scottish author's time in San Francisco in the 1880s.

Portsmouth Square contains more history per square foot than almost any spot in San Francisco. A plaque commemorates the raising of the American flag. Another marks the site where the first public school in California opened in 1848. The Stevenson monument recalls the writer who wandered these streets before tuberculosis drove him to the South Pacific. Beneath all these commemorations, the square functions as what it has always been: a place where people come together. The tai chi practitioners, the chess players, the children, and the tourists occupy the same space that forty-niners and their hangers-on once filled with ambition and chaos. The square's gift is its continuity.