Month: December 2024

On Christmas day I took a walk through Union Square, past Maiden Lane to Chinatown. From Chinatown, I rode a cable car up to the Fairmont hotel to check out their lobby. A friend of mine named Nora wanted to go along but couldn’t make it, so I took some videos for her, and text them to her as I went along. In keeping with the vintage vibes, I thought it would be fun to try to find some old pictures afterward that were taken close to where my videos were shot. Some of them line up pretty good to my mini movies. The vintage pictures are thumbnail images.

  

I started out here in Union Square; I didn’t take a video for Nora while I was here, but I got a nice wide angle shot of the Square. Leaving Union Square, I crossed through Maiden Lane to Grant Avenue, and headed up to Chinatown. From there, I took a cable car up Nob Hill to the Fairmont Hotel to check out their festive lobby. I jumped back on a cable car at California Street and Mason and headed back down to Market; all in all, a Christmas Day well spent.

  

Walking up Grant Street from Maiden Lane, I passed by the old White House Department Store. The store is gone now, but the parking garage is still there. The garage was playing Bing Crosby and company singing ‘White Christmas’ from the old movie ‘Holiday Inn’. Class is where you find it. The vintage picture is a slide photo I took in the early 1980s. You can see the Parking Garage sign in the lower center of my picture.

Reaching Commercial Street and Grant Avenue, a group of musicians were entertaining passing visitors (me included) with a version of Jingle Bells. They were performing about where the lady is stepping on to the sidewalk in the 1960 photo from opensfhistory.org.

 

I headed back to California Street and jumped on the outside of a cable car heading up Nob Hill, the same stretch as the two cable cars in the vintage 1950 pictures. (opensfhistory.org)

  

I couldn’t get a date on the picture of the Fairmont Hotel Lobby from the San Francisco Public Library Archives, but it was taken at almost the same spot as my video. The Christmas tree is blocking out the view of the Grand Staircase in my movie.

I got a spot up front on a cable car taking the plunge back down California Street from Mason, seen in the 1950 photo.

Passengers exchanging cheers from the passing cable cars as we crossed Kearny Street heading toward Market Street and the Southern Pacific Building: The older photo is from 1973. (opensfhistory.org) People who knock San Francisco should go there on Christmas Day; it’s just as wonderful as any place in the country to spend the holiday, or anyplace in the world, for that matter.

It dried up Saturday afternoon, and was perfect Christmas weather to check out the Stockton Street closure from O’Farrell to Post Streets. I was able to get some r.f.m.u. shots (reasonable facsimile match ups) of vintage photos of the two block stretch from UC Berkley and San Francisco Main Libraries Archives. (Thumbnail images)

 

Looking north from Geary to Post Streets: This was as close of a lineup I could from the Neiman Marcus Restaurant. All of the buildings along Post Street at the top have been demolished, except for the Bullock and Jones Building with the arched windows in the top row that may have been featured in the 1948 film noir, ‘Race Street’. (See December 13, 2019)

The walk stretches from here at O’Farrell and Stockton Streets…..

  

…..to here at Post and Stockton. “Don’t worry, fellow, it’s only a camera.” Of course, he did have to insult my photographic capabilities by saying, “Well, just as long as there isn’t any film in it.”

  

Can’t leave out the beloved City of Paris Department Store, in a photo taken probably shortly before it was demolished in 1979:

  

Airline strikers at Maiden Lane:

  

Looking north toward the old Sutter Medical Building and the Hotel Plaza where the Apple Building is now:

  

The intersection of Geary and Stockton in 1909:

  

Streetcars rumbling through Geary and Stockton Streets:

Union Square is all dialed in for Christmas again, and Friday will start another Winter Walk, where parts of Stockton Street and Maiden Lane are closed off and carpeted for foot traffic only. I went over there last Saturday to do some updates around the Square of some old pictures I found on the San Francisco and UC Berkeley Library Archives. (Thumbnail images)

 

The northwest corner of the Square: Looks like an art display going on. The kid probably didn’t enjoy it much; kids have more fun in Union Square nowadays.

  

The northeast corner: Yeah, he’s digging the art displays. The Apple Building is now where the Plaza Hotel was. Lots of police presence, which doesn’t bother me at all.

  

Looking west toward the St. Francis Hotel; looks the 1950s: The United Crusade, are they still around?

  

Looking down Geary toward Powell: I remember BLUMS.

  

Looking toward the southwest corner of the Square from the corner of Powell and Geary during the 1940s:

Same corner as the previous picture during the 60s: I can recognize a Valiant on the far left, and a ford Fairlane, I think.

  

A rare picture of Union Square looking toward the southeast corner of the Square in 1898, before the Dewey Monument was installed in 1903: The domed building in the center is the Call Building. You can just barely make it out in the haze without its dome to the left of the Dewey Monument. The City of Paris Department Store is the large building on the right in the vintage picture, and is where Neiman Marcus is today.

  

This old photo looking southeast down Geary from the UC Berkley Library Archives lines up pretty good with a picture I took from the Westin St Francis Tower a few years ago before they closed the tower elevators to the public.. It shows the rebuilding of Downtown San Francisco after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, so it was probably taken in 1907. Some of the surviving buildings from the earthquake can be seen in my picture. The steel frame of the Whittell Building, I think it’s now called the Grace Building, is on the left. The Gothic roof of the old Mutual Savings Bank Building at Market and Kearny Streets, to the right of the Whittle Building, is in the center of the modern picture. The Call Building on the right was modernized and had its dome removed in 1939. It’s the brown and white building directly below it in my photo, and is now the Central Tower. The City of Paris Department Store, lower right center, survived, but was demolished in 1979. It’s where the Neiman Marcus Department Store is now.

Another SF Secret: There was an article in a recent San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Hartlaub about the old ferryboat, the Klamath, retired from service in 1956. She’s now tied up at Pier 9 on the Embarcadero, open to the public and free. It’s a great spot to have your lunch, like I did last week. (Thumbnail images)

 

The Klamath is second from the bottom in the 1957 picture from the Chronicle.

   

An F Line Streetcar drops you off right by Pier 9. 

  

The Klamath is docked on the south side of Pier 9 where the SS Momacdawn was docked in the opensfhistory.org picture from 1949.

  

The south side of Pier 9 in 1966: (opensfhistory.org)

  

Another view of Pier 9 from the north side in the 1960s: (San Francisco Library Archives)

  

Pier 9 used to be Pier 11, built at the end of the Nineteenth Century. It was demolished in 1935 and rebuilt as Pier 9. The old photo is Pier 11 in 1907. (Vintage picture from Port City by Michael R. Corbett)

  

Let’s go aboard the Klamath.

The second deck is open for people to sit and relax as long as they want. There weren’t many people on the boat last Wednesday; I don’t think a lot of people are aware that the Klamath is open to the public.

  

There are some interesting pictures and stories on the walls of the boat, like this newspaper story of when the Klamath collided with a submarine in the Bay in 1944.

  

The views from the third deck are the best part of the visit.

  

The Ferry Building, Salesforce Tower, and the Embarcadero Center, among others, seen from the Third deck:

  

And a great view of the Bay Bridge.

  

Pier 9 under construction, looking toward Telegraph Hill in 1935: (San Francisco Library Archives)

  

I’ll close with a television drama scene near Pier 9 in a 1957 episode of in a little known series that ran from 1957 to 1958, ‘Harbor Command’. Although the show only ran for one season, it has some great San Francisco locations from the 1950s. Here, in an episode entitled ‘Gold Smugglers’ two dental assistants have been forging the dentist’s name to order gold that they’ve been stockpiling. They murder the doctor when he finds out what they’ve been doing, and they attempt to smuggle the gold out of San Francisco. Here, they’re trying to make their escape in a taxi on the Embarcadero; Pier 9 is in the background. Of course, they didn’t get away. You can see construction work on the soon to be finished Embarcadero Freeway in the right background of the show scenes.