Hillsdale

A little history

The Hillsdale you know started with a shopping center. Developer David D. Bohannon assembled hundreds of acres here in the old Beresford district, later renamed Hillsdale, and in November 1954 opened Hillsdale Shopping Center on what had been a dairy farm. It was an open-air plaza of wide walkways and palm-lined paths built for the postwar car, anchored by a brand-new Macy's that opened its doors that November.

For a generation of locals, the heart of Hillsdale was not a department store, it was the Farmer's Market at the north end, past 31st Avenue. This open-air hall had a grocery, a produce section, a butcher, and one of the Peninsula's first international food courts, with spots people still name from memory: the Capri Room, a cocktail restaurant tucked in a corner, alongside the Hofbrau, the Steak Inn, and Chinese food. You would sit at round tables inlaid with the market's rooster logo, in blue vinyl bucket chairs, under round skylights that poured in the light. Plenty of people came as much to socialize as to shop, and more than one still remembers a grandmother who was there five days a week.

Over the decades the big anchors came and went. Sears, The Emporium, J.J. Newberry, and Mervyn's joined Macy's, and today Nordstrom holds down a corner. Locals still bring up the little things, like the wishing fountain near the stairs where you would toss in a coin, until it was removed in 1977 during the drought. The open-air center was enclosed into a two-level mall in 1981, and it has kept reinventing itself ever since, pivoting toward an experiential mix of dining, a movie theater, and shops as the newer Bay Meadows blocks filled in right next door.