Market Street has been closed to car traffic from the Ferry Building to 10th Street since 2020. However, there’s a push by many business leaders to reopen the famous stretch to automobile traffic to help revitalize Downtown San Francisco. In April, 2025, it was announced that Waymo Service will be allowed to travel along the area, still closed to private cars, taxis, and Uber traffic. These are updates of vintage pictures featuring Market Street traffic that I found on the Historical San Francisco Facebook page. (Thumbnail images)
Market Street near 5th during the 1920s: You can still see the Call and Humboldt Buildings in the far left background.
Market Street at Powell and Eddy Streets in 1963: The building with all of the interesting advertisements in the center was demolished in 1967, and was where the Hallidie Plaza and the Powell Street BART Station are now.
The green Pacific Building at 4th and Market Street in 1951: The Pacific Building was the largest reinforced concrete building in the world when it was built in 1907.
The Market, Mason and Turk Street intersection during the 1960s: The view is looking north along Mason Street. You can see the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill in the center of both pictures.
Market Street, between Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in a 1939 picture taken from the opensfhistory.org website: Now that’s more like today!
Traffic passing a boarded up Emporium Building on a rainy 1990s day: The building, which would eventually become Westfield Centre, was boarded up again in 2020 during the Covid Pandemic, and is now half empty.
Off-Market Street traffic; 1st Street at Mission in 1962: This was the gateway for me and my friends when we explored San Francisco during high school. Behind where the photos were taken was the old Transbay Terminal, where we took the AC Transit R Bus from Hayward to San Francisco. Even if we knew how to drive then, none of us had a car.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 
Oh, the cars! The second set of pictures includes an Impala, an Electra (!) and some sort of Chrysler Taxi. (Actually, I do not know what models they are. These are merely guesses.) I do not know the years of the cars, but some of them were rather old at the time (by the standards of the time).
I enjoyed the building and street walking tour from my chair this afternoon. I admire the photos of the Pacific Building. I imagine the designer gave thought to how the building could be seen from the open intersection of Market, Stockton, and O’farrell streets. I hadn’t realized that the building across Market St is a triangular shape until I looked west on Market from Grant to toward Stockton.
Thanks, Mike Callahan
Thank you, Mike!