This month, Market Street, east of 10th Street, will become free of private cars — the first step of several planned to redesign San Francisco’s dramatic eastern boulevard.

It’s been part of the city since its earliest days, when city surveyor Jasper O’Farrell added the diagonal line to his map in 1847. O’Farrell made the street 40 feet wider than New York’s grandest promenade, Broadway, Margot Patterson Doss reported in her column, making Market Street an ideal place for public celebrations and demonstrations.

While the annual Pride celebrations, war protests and anti-nuclear demonstrations, and celebratory parades for the Warriors, Giants and 49ers are fresh in our memories, Market Street has been the stage for large public rallies and demonstrations for more than a century. A search through The Chronicle’s archives turned up long-lost stories and photos of Market Street serving as San Francisco’s public square.

There were major celebrations in the 19th century to welcome visiting Presidents Rutherford Hayes and Benjamin Harrison. “At Kearney and Market, thousands had congregated,” the April 26, 1891, Chronicle reported on Harrison’s visit. “As the President’s carriage arrived, it could barely make its way. It was surrounded by a living wall.”

In 1908, the Great White Fleet — the U.S. Navy battleships traveling around the world — arrived in San Francisco, and the celebration included a well-attended parade down Market Street. A huge crowd, estimated at 500,000, watched 8,000 sailors and Marines land at the Ferry Building and then march down Market Street to the Civic Center.

“It was a continuous parade by water and land from the battleships to Van Ness Avenue, without a hitch,” The Chronicle reported.

Certainly one of the most emotional celebrations on Market Street occurred April 22, 1919, when, nearly six months after Armistice Day, the troops from the 363rd Infantry and 347th Artillery units, which included many San Francisco citizens, returned from serving on the front in France.

Chronicle reporter Dudley Barrows described the emotional reunion:

“A great intake of breath on the part of half a million lungs — a mental girding up of every faculty of triumphant expression, and then the human deluge! In the twinkling of an eye, San Francisco with one prolonged and thunderous sob of praise to God and pride, joy, and frenzy charged down on her returning soldier boys and enfolded them in her ample bosom.”

Traffic on Market has been an issue for more than 100 years, and San Francisco has considered banning vehicles from the street before. On July 20, 1916, The Chronicle ran an editorial supporting a jitney bus ban from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day. Police were also called upon to establish lanes for pedestrians crossing Market Street.

“At last the mere pedestrian is recognized as having rights,” The Chronicle wrote. “No longer is he to feel that he is embarking on a perilous adventure and taking his life in his own feet every time he dares cross from one side to the other of the main thoroughfare. At least not from 10:30 to 4:00.”

Last month, Chronicle writer John King made an archive discovery of his own: a downtown plan from 1963, with a “succinct and thoroughly convincing case” for why cars should be banned from Market Street.

But amid resistance from business groups and the mayor himself, the plan was apparently scrapped. But the reasons for doing so back then, King found, were extremely similar to the decision that will change Market Street this month.

More from The Chronicle

• Not Your Century: 1919 — the Boston Molasses Flood.

• Our San Francisco: Forget the Golden Gate Bridge, here are Bay Area locals’ treasured landmarks.

• Downtown skyline changes: See the Transamerica Pyramid rise amid rancor.

• FDR discovery: 80-year-old, long-buried photos of president’s Bay Area visit.

From the Archive is a weekly column by Bill Van Niekerken, the library director of The Chronicle, exploring the depths of the newspaper’s archive. It’s part of Chronicle Vault, a twice-weekly newsletter highlighting more than 150 years of San Francisco stories. It is edited by Taylor Kate Brown, The Chronicle’s newsletter editor. Sign up for the newsletter here, and follow Chronicle Vault on Instagram. Contact Bill at bvanniekerken@sfchronicle.com and Taylor at taylor.brown@sfchronicle.com.