Some interesting San Francisco buildings. At the left: The fictional building that would soon catch fire in the 1974 blockbuster ‘The Towering Inferno’. I still don’t know how this movie won an Oscar for cinematography! The Bank of America Building on California where some of the movie was filmed is, usually, a dark brown monolithic looking thing, but if you take a picture at the right spot, and the right time of day, it makes a good comparison. Second from the left: This image from some remarkable live footage at the Ferry Building was taken on Market Street the day after the 1906 Earthquake. For reasons that I’ve never really understood, the Ferry Building does not face Market Street squarely. That’s just one of those things I’ve always known, but never thought much about until now! Second from the right: I don’t know who lives in the mansion at 2898 Broadway in Pacific Heights. Probably, somebody with a stately name like Mrs. Basington-Basington or something, but it was used as the setting of Lana Turner’s home in the 1960 crime thriller ‘Portrait in Black’. At the right: The Columbus and Kearny intersection after the 1906 Earthquake; the City goes back about its business. That’s the steel skeleton of the Columbus Tower Building, now owned by Francis Ford Coppola. To the left of it was the Montgomery Block Building, built in 1853. This haunt of just about every prominent writer to visit San Francisco from Bret Harte to Mark Twain survived the 1906 Earthquake, and was demolished in 1959. The Transamerica Pyramid now occupies the spot.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 