“Now, I’m standing on the corner of Third and Market. I’m looking around. I’m figuring it out. There it is, right in front of me. The whole city. The whole world. People going by. They’re going somewhere. I don’t know where, but they’re going. I ain’t going anywhere.” – From ‘The Time of Your Life’ by William Saroyan.
Whenever I pass by Third Street at Market, I think about Saroyan’s passage. He understood San Francisco for what it is; a fabled and exciting city. Although few writers are of Saroyan’s caliber, there are still some (San Francisco Columnist, Carl Nolte, comes to mind) who look at the City the way Saroyan saw it. However, the day before I took my updates for this post, a San Francisco 49er football player’s season is over, although he’s in stable condition, because some punk tried to rob him and shot him less than two blocks from Third Street and Market. If Herb Caen was still alive, he’d probably write, “Could have happened anywhere.” But San Francisco’s going to get the blame. (Thumbnail images)
The Call Building, on the northwest corner of Third Street at Market, shortly after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire: In 1939, for reasons that are hard to understand, the top crown was removed from the Call Building, and it was streamlined into looking like the Daily Planet Building where Clark and Lois work. It’s now called the Central Tower Building. You can see half of it behind the rebuilt William Randolph Hearst Building. (UC Berkeley Library Archives)
Looking to and from Third and Market in these two comparisons from opensfhistory.org. First is looking southwest toward Third and Market and the Central Tower in 1970: Morris Plan; I remember taking out a loan from the one on Broadway in Oakland when I worked there long ago. I wonder if I ever paid that back? Oh, I must have or I’d have heard from them by now. Second is looking northeast toward the Chronicle Building in 1956.
Third and Market Streets, looking west along Market during the late 1950s: “Now, I’m standing on the corner of Third and Market with a clipboard. I’m looking around. I’m figuring it out.” Nah, that doesn’t have the same class. (San Francisco Pictures Blog)
An accident at Third Street and Market in 1940, around the time of Saroyan’s play; I’m blaming this one on the truck driver. The accident happened in front of where LensCrafters is now. (opensfhistory.org)
‘Harry’ doesn’t make it clear in the play whether he was watching the world go by standing on the west side of Third and Market in front of the Call Building on the right, or the east side of Third and Market in front of the Hearst Building on the left. The vintage picture from opensfhistory.org was during 1946.
Looking toward the Hearst and Call Buildings at Third and Market Streets in an undated picture from the San Francisco Public Library Archives; I’m guessing that it was around 1967 and that’s Market Street BART construction.
A great picture from the 1960s, looking toward where Third Street comes into Market, from south of Mission Street during the 1960s: The Call Building is on the left. The Gothic looking Mutual Savings Bank Building is in the center. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)
- Addendum, November 23,2024: Ricky Pearsall, the 49er player shot near Third Street and Market, has fully recovered and is back on the playing roster for the San Francisco 49ers.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 
Gee, I was not aware that BART was that old. Online, I can see that it is even older, since it was established a decade earlier in 1957. In about 1977 or 1978, my fifth grade class took BART from Fremont to Oakland, where we walked just one block or so from the Lake Merritt Station to the Oakland Museum of California. BART was so futuristic at the time, and I thought that it was rather new. Of course, BART extends a bit farther south than Fremont now.