Lombard Street is an iconic and renowned tourist landmark in San Francisco, often occupying a similar space in popular consciousness as cable cars, the Golden Gate Bridge, or Alcatraz. This fame is, at first glance, self explanatory.

The street is pleasantly decorated, host to beautiful views from its top, and though native San Franciscans are nearly obligated to state its nature as second most crooked in the world (Vermont Street in Potrero Hill being first), the street’s crookedness is nonetheless unique.

The street’s fame, however, raises a question to which even many San Franciscans do not know an exact answer: when, and why, was the street built so crookedly? The street, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, began as a steep, straight, cobbled road until 1922, when the city government constructed the now famous brick road crookedly winding down the hill to allow cars to traverse it.