Entry No. 13 — the San Francisco file — filed under: cemetery

San Francisco Columbarium

A copper-domed 1898 neoclassical rotunda that once anchored the sprawling Odd Fellows Cemetery — until the city banned burials and cremation and shipped nearly everyone else to Colma, leaving this building as the last non-denominational resting place still inside San Francisco. It survived the 1906 earthquake and fire that leveled the neighborhood around it, and many of its niches hold hand-decorated tributes to San Franciscans who died in the 1980s AIDS epidemic.

The move: Walk the stained-glass rotunda's spiral staircases past niches street names come from (Eddy, Steiner, Haight) and read the personal shrines people have built inside the glass-front compartments — model trains, wine bottles, photographs — for strangers memorializing their dead.

• 📍 Inner Richmond, San Francisco
• 💸 $$
• ⚡ Up for anything
• 🌗 Indoors

Where: 1 Loraine Ct, San Francisco, CA 94118

Hours: Added 2026-07-20 — confirm current hours before you go.

Plan a visit & invite your people →

Further reading: Wikipedia · dignitymemorial.com · kqed.org

last checked: 2026-07-20