Summary
Sacred Heart Church was dedicated 107 years ago and is one of the finest landmarks in the Western Addition. The exterior is a blend of Lombard and Classical Revival styles, while the interior is richly embellished with marble altars, stained glass, and murals. Much like a church on the summit of an Italian hilltown, Sacred Heart is sited prominently on a rise, and its five-story campanile can be seen from many vantage points hi the neighborhood. Built of yellow brick and terra cotta, its detailing and finish are of a high order of quality. It is one of the three last surviving churches by T. J. Welsh, who was one of San Francisco's important Catholic Church architects. The demolition of this church would leave an irreplaceable void, both in the Western Addition neighborhood and in San Francisco's architectural history.

Sacred Heart Parish
The parish was founded in 1885 to serve Catholics in the western part of San Francisco, from Buchanan Street west to the Pacific Ocean. As the city grew, other parishes were carved from Sacred Heart, including Holy Cross, St. Agnes, Star of the Sea, St. Monica's, and others. Small, temporary wooden buildings were used at the Fell and Fillmore site before the present church building was built in the 1890s.

The first pastor of the parish was James Flood, who personally went into the neighborhood and rang doorbells to raise the $60,000 construction cost of the church building. The congregation was overwhelmingly Irish at the time, and was said to be "the most Irish Parish west of Chicago." It included many who are remembered for notable achievements, such as the famous opera singer Maude Fay Simington, the Mahoney brothers (contractors who built the Palace and St. Francis hotels), Victorian house builders Hugh Keenan and Mathew Kavanagh, C. J. I. Devlin (architect of St. Ignatius Church), and the family of boxer Jim Corbett. With over 1800 families in the parish, Sacred Heart had to hold six masses each Sunday hi order to serve everyone, in the 1890s the parish established a convent and school, staffed by the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, on this property.

In the 1910s Italians and Latin-Americans joined the church. During World War II African-Americans, who moved to the city to work in shipyards, joined as well, in the 1960s Filipino immigrants became members, and shortly before the dawn of the 21st century a Nigerian Ibo community joined as well. Over the past half-century the church has operated or been a partner in dozens of social programs such as the Family School for single mothers, childcare services, and programs for seniors and substance abusers. The twelfth pastor, Father Kenneth Westray, Jr., appointed in 1985, was the first African-American priest to be ordained for the San Francisco archdiocese.

The San Francisco archdiocese closed Sacred Heart parish at the end of 2004 as part of a general consolidation of the city's parishes.