In a bar on the seedier side of town, a tattooed bartender makes a heavy drink for a couple in their 70s. Indie haircuts dot the club. Kitten on the Keys plays piano, tinkling keys and twinkling eyes. Decked out in a red and black corset, she belts out one of the many songs she’s written, “Grandma Sells My Panties on eBay.”

Toppled buildings, charred memories and flattened dreams don’t exactly signal hope for a better future to most people. That being the case, in the aftermath of the horrific 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, few people looked at the devastated city and thought of a chance for something better. However, as Simon Winchester described in his book A Crack in the Edge of the World, there was at least one man who found hope amid the hulking piles of detritus. That man was Daniel Burnham, the eminent Chicago-based architect and civic planner. Burnham’s plan for a new San Francisco, ironically developed shortly before the great disaster, envisioned a city in which grand parks and waterways kept the Citizens by the Bay in harmony with their natural surroundings. Unfortunately, the prevailing politicians decided to build the city as quickly as possible in the same way it had been before—over nature rather than amid it.