Not a very useful stairway, given that there's no way to cross San Jose at the bottom and there's a pedestrian bridge at nearby Roanoke Street.

When these stairs were built in the late 1930s or 1940s, San Jose Avenue was half of its current width and had a crosswalk at Saint Mary's. The other half of the Bernal Cut was occupied by the right-of-way of the old Southern Pacific Railroad line from the Mission District towards Daly City. This crossing was removed in the 1950s when the railroad line was removed and San Jose Avenue widened.