Month: February 2025

This was the closing picture I posted on my last blog entry. I’m always interested when find vintage photos of the old traditional telephone booth that was stationed on the western side of old St. Mary’s Church on Grant Ave. I don’t know when it was removed, probably during the 1990s, but it goes at least as far back as the 1960s. (Thumbnail images)

  

In November of 2019, I posted this photo update and wrote “In my last post I showed a picture of two ladies from the late 1950s making a telephone call from a phone booth next to Old St. Mary’s Church that was designed to look like a telephone booth in Chinatown should look. This picture taken in the early 1960s is the only other picture I’ve seen yet of that old telephone booth with the red roof on the far right. The telephone booth was just behind where the cement potted tree is in my picture.” I found out later that I was wrong.

  

It wasn’t until I had looked back at old slide pictures I had taken in the early 1980s that I had seen another picture of the “old telephone booth with the red roof”. I think my top slide was from 1985.

  

Photographer Fred Lyon took the top picture of the “two ladies from the late 1950s” that I mentioned in 2019, but his picture may have been taken in the 1960s.

 

 

I stopped by for the second day of the Grant Avenue Street Market Fair last Sunday as Chinatown begins its celebration of the Lunar New Year. (Thumbnail images)

 

The top picture is Chinatown at Grant Avenue and Commercial Street from a photo I took in March of 2020, on the day after the shelter-in-place order due to the Covid-19 outbreak. I was stunned at how empty and quiet San Francisco was; like a science fiction movie. This was as close of an update I could get to the picture I took in 2020.

 

California Street, looking up to Grant Avenue in 1907, one year after the 1906 Earthquake. Chinatown was quick to rebuild because they knew that the rich tycoons on Nob Hill wanted to relocate the Chinese community to the southeastern side of San Francisco. (UC Berkley Library Archives)

  

Portsmouth Square, looks like the 1970s: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

This remarkable picture, taken in 1942, shows a Japanese midget submarine that ran aground and was captured during the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was on display on Grant Avenue between Washington and Jackson Streets. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

Wentworth Alley in 1957: The hitching posts are gone. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

The southwest corner of Grant Avenue and Pine Street, and the long gone Grand View Hotel: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

 

The northeast corner of Grant Avenue and Pine Street, taken probably around the same time as the previous vintage picture: (UC Berkley Library Archives)

  

A parade at Stockton and Sacramento Streets in honor of the 32^nd anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Republic: This would make the vintage picture taken in 1944. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

The now gone traditional Chinese telephone booth that stood next to Old St. Mary’s Church for years: The booth was directly behind where the musician was sitting in my picture. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)