A former section of the city's red light district, Maiden Lane is now home to high-end boutiques and art galleries.

[4] In 1958, Jane Jacobs described the street, in an essay that was later characterized as a "spirited rebuttal to the antiseptic urban renewal that was gospel at the time":[4] Starting with nothing more remarkable than the dirty, neglected back sides of department stores and nondescript buildings, a group of merchants made this alley into one of the finest shopping streets in America.

All the buildings, old and new, look individual; the most celebrated is an expanse of tan brick with a curved doorway, by architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

[5]In 1961, the San Francisco Chronicle's columnist Herb Caen praised Maiden Lane as "a busy little block of intriguing shops.

[1] In 2016, the Chronicle's urban design critic John King revisited Jacobs' 1958 essay and found that much of it no longer applied: "Maiden Lane feels mighty generic these days [...] posh but pallid, a testament to the dangers of prosperity when it has more to do with the global scene than the local one.