Lombard Street

This guide to Lombard Street in San Francisco starts with a practical problem in 1922: property owner Carl Henry's own block was so steep, a 27 percent grade, that horses and early automobiles could barely climb it. It follows city engineer Clyde Healy's fix, the eight hairpin turns carved into the hillside and paved in red brick, and how the street stayed largely unknown outside the neighborhood for decades afterward. A listening tip: look at the hydrangeas lining each turn, planted years after the switchbacks themselves were built.