1st and Market in the 1930’s, and on a drizzling Sunday yesterday: Not as busy, but a lot quieter. They didn’t need Xanax back in those days; they had a cocktail lounge on every corner. (San Francisco Main Library History Room)
1st and Mission, looks like the late 1970’s or early 1980’s: The streetcar is turning into the old Trans Bay Terminal Building that closed in 2010.
The Stock Exchange Building at Pine and Sansome, in 1960, not the end of the Century like the street sign reads. (Bad joke!) It’s now the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. (Phil Palmer)
I may have posted this one of Post and Stockton at Union Square before, but I couldn’t find it in the archives so I’m posting it again. Anyway, it satisfies the curiosity that all human beings have as to what people looked like in crosswalks in the 1950’s as compared to today.
The St. Francis Hotel from Stockton and Geary about a hundred years ago, and last Christmas: The construction is for the Muni Metro extension that will run underneath Chinatown to Fisherman’s Wharf.
Ah, where are they now! Another Shorpy masterpiece, Showgirls at the old El Capitan Theater on Mission Street between 19th and 20th in 1932: The building with the arched window those cuties are in front of is now the Gas Head Tavern. The exterior façade of the El Capitan Theater is still there today.
In front of the old Hall of Justice Building, once bail bond central: The old picture, kind of, exemplifies the activity of the area to me. On the right, the attorney, in the middle, the defendant, and on the left, a worried wife:
Wife: “What do you think he’ll get from the judge?”
Attorney: “Maybe not much, but we’d have had a better chance if he’d have wore a tie!”
That’s the Columbus Tower Building with the dome on top in the center of both pictures. The old Hall of Justice Building was demolished for the Hilton Hotel at the end of the 1960’s. (Phil Palmer)
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 