CityLights Residential

What started as the nation's first all-paperback bookstore in 1953, founded by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, has evolved into a celebrated literary landmark and publishing house. City Lights quickly became a gathering place for readers, writers, artists, and activists, fostering a legacy of anti-authoritarian politics and unconstrained intellectual curiosity that continues to define its character. In 1955, Ferlinghetti expanded the vision by launching City Lights Publishers, beginning with the iconic Pocket Poets Series. This publishing arm gained national attention with the publication of Allen Ginsberg's influential "Howl and Other Poems" in 1956, a work that challenged conventions and led to a widely publicized obscenity trial against Ferlinghetti. This event solidified City Lights' reputation as a courageous and progressive institution.

Over the decades, City Lights has expanded its physical space several times, now occupying three floors and offering a vast selection of new-release hardcovers and quality paperbacks from major publishing houses alongside titles from smaller, independent presses. The bookstore is renowned for its extensive and in-depth collections of poetry, fiction, translations, politics, history, philosophy, spirituality, music, film, and cultural studies. The publishing house has also grown significantly, with well over two hundred titles in print and a continued commitment to publishing innovative and progressive ideas, resisting censorship and conservatism. Today, City Lights remains an independent force in the literary world, a testament to its enduring mission to serve as a literary meetingplace and a champion of free intellectual inquiry. It was officially recognized as a historic landmark in 2001. The City Lights Foundation, a nonprofit arm, also publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture.