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The Stanyan House was a prefab house before prefab houses became the icon of the American suburbs. SF Supervisor Charles Stanyan ordered the house in New England and had it shipped around the Horn where it was constructed in Lower Pacific Heights in 1854.

In the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, over 80 percent of San Francisco was destroyed. Twenty-five thousand buildings on 490 city blocks were leveled by fires. It's a miracle anything survived.

But buildings did survive — a handful of mostly brick houses and businesses that are a testament to the city's tough Wild West roots. Most of San Francisco's oldest standing structures were built right after the Gold Rush began, clustered in today's Jackson Square area. If you want a tour of old S.F., that's the place to go: Within a few blocks, you can see almost a dozen buildings constructed in the 1850s, including a bank where William Tecumseh Sherman was the manager.

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The old San Francisco tour continues further west. The city's military influences can be seen in the Officers' Club at the Presidio, Fort Point and the infamous haunted Haskell House in Fort Mason.

In the Mission, there is Mission Dolores and a few tiny cottages that once housed the Tanforan family. And dotted around the spaces in between are a handful of private residences that have survived decades and disasters, like the Feusier House, built in 1858 for a pair of phrenology enthusiasts.

MORE: Library of Congress images show San Francisco as it was before 1870

If you want to see some of San Francisco's oldest buildings, take a look at the map and the gallery above. You may have walked by history without even knowing it — which is one of the great joys of this beautiful city.

Special thanks to Hugh Rowland, Executive Liaison at the California Historical Society, and NoeHill in San Francisco for providing invaluable information on the topic. 

Katie Dowd is the SFGATE managing editor.