There’s a Facebook page that I found recently titled, aptly, Vintage San Francisco. They’ve posted some wonderful long-ago San Francisco pictures, but they haven’t updated their page recently. I hope they continue posting. Here are a few updates I’ve done of some of their vintage photos. (Thumbnail images)
Market Street at Grant Avenue, circa 1917: “The Largest American Flag in the World” flies above Market Street.
A 1909 postcard of the Sharon House at the Children’s Playground in Golden Gate Park:
The White House Department Store on the corner of Sutter Street and Grant Avenue in an undated photo: the building was built in 1908, and now houses the Banana Republic Store.
Just two days ago, April 18th, a crowd, including Mayor London Breed and former Mayor Willie Brown gathered here at Lotta’s Fountain at 5:12 AM to commemorate the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. The vintage picture, with the Chronicle Building on the left, and the Palace Hotel on the right, is from 1909.
A mother and her two daughters pass the Cliff House heading up to the Sutro Bathhouse, circa 1900: Looks like there was some bullying going on between the big girl in the dress on the right and the little girl with her mom, looking back.
409 Laguna Street in 1908: Maps of the 1906 Fire show that the blaze extended to three blocks west of Van Ness to Octavia Street. The Laguna Apartment Building here is one block further west past Octavia, and if it was around two years before the vintage photo was taken, it just missed destruction.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 
Isn’t it odd how the White House Department Store and the building to the left in the first pair of pictures got another floor added above? Those buildings must have been constructed to support such an addition. It would not be to code nowadays.
Good eye, Tony! I’ve never notice that about the one on the corner of Market Street and Grant Avenue.
Some buildings were designed to support additional floors above. When I was in school. I lived in a dormitory building that was built to support a fourth floor above the three that were originally built. The Civic Center buildings in Los Gatos were built to support upper floors that were never added. Unfortunately, building codes changed. Besides, in Los Gatos, the architecture of the Civic Center was never popular, so replacement was preferred.
The buildings in your pictures seem to be older than that sort of architectural technology.