Union Square getting ready for Christmas, 2024

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.