Month: June 2025

As I mentioned several posts ago, I have two copies of the 1940 WPA guide to San Francisco, the original 1940 hardback copy from Armchair Guide Series, and the 2011 paperback issue reprinted by the University of California Press. These are a few more ‘POINTS OF INTEREST’ from the book of locations not usually on visitors itinerary when they tour San Francisco. As before, I’ll post the descriptions from the book, many of them enjoyably outdated but some of them still accurate, along with then and now photos from my archives of the sites.(Thumbnail images)

 

{17. Founded a decade after ‘49 by John Sullivan, the HIBERNIA SAVINGS AND LOAN SOCIETY (open 10-3), NW. corner McAllister and Jones Sts., has survived eight decades of prosperity and panic to become one of San Francisco’s oldest banks. Its classic one-story building (Albert Pissis, architect) – whose granite facades were gleaming white when finished in 1892 but have weathered to a dull gray – survived even the fire of 1906.}

My update was of an Edward H. Suydam drawing from the 1930s. The building has been empty for years and years.

  

{55. The 12-story HEARST BUILDING (visitors conducted on two-hour 7-9 p.m.), SE. corner Market and Third Sts., of white terra cotta with polychrome ornamentation, houses the San Francisco Examiner, first paper in the Hearst chain. The first of its five regular daily editions appears on the streets about seven o’clock in the evening.}

My update is of the original Hearst Building on the left, destroyed and rebuilt by Hearst after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire.

  

{65. The neo-Gothic, gable-roofed ONE ELEVEN SUTTER BUILDING, SW corner Montgomery and Sutter Sts., since 1927 has reared its buff-colored terra cotta facades 22 stories above a site that was worth $300 when James Lick bought it and 175,000 when he died.}

The authors didn’t mention that it is also considered to be the building where Sam spade’s office was in the novel ‘The Maltese Falcon’ by fiction historians. 111 Sutter, on the right in the photo from the 1984 edition of the novel from North point Press, can just be seen between taller building in my picture taken from the St. Francis Tower.

{75. By day, bathed in sunlight, the 30-story SHELL BUILDING, NW. corner Battery and Bush St., San Francisco headquarters of the Shell Oil Company empire, is a buff, tapering shaft; by night, floodlight-swept, a tower looming in amber radiance.}

  

{81. On wooden piles driven into the mud of what was Yerba Buena Cove rest the 17 steel-and-concrete stories of the PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC BUILDING, 245 Market St., headquarters of the nation’s third largest utilities system, which originated with Peter Donahue’s gas company (1852) and the California Electric Light Company (1879), both Pacific Coast pioneers.}

That’s Lee Remick running after Jack Lemmon out of the PG&E Building in the 1962 film ‘Days of Wine and Roses’. You can see the Embarcadero Freeway in front of the Ferry Building in the film image.

 

{119. Everyone is a first-nighter at the MANDARIN THEATER (open 7:30 p.m. – 12:30 a.m.; adm. 25 cents-50 cents), for the play changes each evening. With few props and little scenery, the native dramas seem to flow on endlessly, while the orchestra (seated onstage out of range of the play and the audience consume melon seeds, ice cream and “pop.”

The 1930s picture, looking toward the Mandarin, is from photographer, Ken Cathcart.

 

{122. First Roman Catholic parish church in San Francisco. ST. FRANCIS CHURCH, 620 Vallejo St., owes its origin to the religious zeal of a group of the Gold Rush town’s French Residents, who persuaded a young officer of the United Stated Army to give the use of a small room for services.}

In the 1962 film ‘Experiment in Terror’ FBI agent John Ripley (Glenn Ford) goes into the St. Francis Church to question a priest in the hopes of finding an extortionist and murderer.

  

{130. Where nursemaids trundle streamlined prams along the shrubbery-bordered paths of HUNTINGTON PARK, California, Taylor, and Sacramento Streets., Colis P. Huntington used to stride up to his front door from the cable car stop on California Street.}

{131. Like those Gothic churches of the Middle Ages under construction for generations, GRACE CATHEDRAL, California, Taylor, Sacramento and Jones Sts., is not finished, although its cornerstone was laid by Bishop William Ford Nichols 30 years ago.}

This is the view of Huntington Park and Grace Cathedral from the Top of the Mark. Grace Cathedral, unfinished in the vintage picture, was not completed until 1964.

 

{179. ALTA PLAZA, Steiner, Scott, Clay, and Jackson Sts., was reclaimed by John McLaren when he filled a deserted rock quarry with rubbish, topped it with soil, planted lawns, and laid out walks and tennis courts. The stairway on the south side’s steep terraced slope is a reproduction of the grand stairway in front of the gaming casino at Monte Carlo.]

The vintage photo at the southwest corner of Alta Plaza is by Phil Palmer. John McLaren was also responsible for Golden Gate Park.

  

{184. Site of the first observatory in California, LAFAYETTE SQUARE, Washington, Gough, Sacramento and Laguna Sts., is a sloping green hill crisscrossed with hedges and graveled walks, topped with tennis courts and a small playground.}

San Franciscans watch San Francisco burn after the 1906 Earthquake from the southeast side of Lafayette Square in a photo that may have been taken by Arnold Genthe.

    

{195. Popular with fishermen of all ages and Sunday promenaders is the 1,850-foot long white concrete MUNICIPAL PIER, foot of Van Ness Ave. The semicircular sea wall, constructed in 1929-34, swings northeastward to protect Aquatic Park’s little harbor.}

Tyne Daly and Clint Eastwood stroll along the pier in the 1976 film ‘The Enforcer’. The pier is closed off to the public now.

  

{254. The MUSIC CONCOURSE (band concerts Sun. and holidays 2-4:30), S. of Main Dr. near Eighth Ave. park entrance, a sunken outdoor auditorium seating 20,000, is 12 feet below the service of the surrounding roadway.}

Main Drive is now called John F. Kennedy Drive.

 

{274. The sandstone PRAYER BOOK CROSS, N. of Main Dr., modeled after an ancient Celtic Cross on the Scottish island of Iona, towers 57 feet above the edge of the bluff.}

{275 On Sundays and holidays, tiny RAINBOW FALLS, N of Main Dr., rush over a cliff at the base of Prayer Book Cross into a fern-bordered pool. Artificially fed from a reservoir atop Strawberry Hill, they were named when colored electric lights were strung along the cliff to make rainbows appear in the spray.}

The electric lights are long gone, and Rainbow Falls has stopped flowing since I did my then and now, but the cross is still on top of the hill.

{281. Homing ground for migratory game and domestic water fowl, SPRECKELS LAKE, N. of Main Dr., supplies much of the water for the park irrigation system. Each Sunday from March to late September the miniature sail and speed boats of the San Francisco Model Yacht Club trim their way across its rippling waters, some attaining a speed of 40 miles an hour.}

Spreckels Lake is one of my favorite spots too, although it doesn’t have the rough shoreline anymore that gave the lake more of a natural look, but I suppose that had to go too.

Now, you’re asking, “What does that mean?” Well, every now and then I post something that isn’t San Francisco, and isn’t vintage. The pictures in this post aren’t San Francisco vintage, but they are then and now photography, and that’s, in part, what this blog is about. Also, a blogger friend of mine named Tony may be interested in the fall and summer horticulture in this set, to which he’ll be familiar with, whereas I’m not. Late November last fall, I was watching the rare autumn horse racing in Pleasanton, CA. It always seems kind of lonely walking around the empty fairgrounds when the fair isn’t going on; no crowds, no corn dogs, no ice cream, no turkey legs, no oysters-on-a-stick, (I can do without those anyway) no deep fried Oreos, just horse racing. I enjoy taking pictures around the empty fairgrounds and matching them up when the Alameda County Fair is open. The fair opened this weekend, and everything is back, except the horse races. The County Fair is always a major part of the summer for me, but without the horse racing it’s kind of like going to Disneyland with Tomorrowland closed. (Thumbnail images)

  

The Green Entrance, where most visitors enter the fair: I’m a little farther back than my November photo, but I wanted to get the overhead sign in.

  

Looking toward where, last November, the Midway of the fair would be this June:

  

The Sky Tram between Buildings B and C:

   

The area between Building C and Q: I’m not sure what they call this area, but it’s pretty fall or summer.

  

I had a hard time finding this spot again; I had to go by the tree on the left. It’s between Buildings C and F.

  

Heritage Park: This used to be about the only place for shade and relaxation in the fair long ago.

 

Those are the opening lyrics to an old Moody Blues song. The singer likes to put his feet up and watch television, which is fine, but I’d probably fall asleep. Last Sunday, a definitive lazy Sunday in my book, I grabbed my camera, and took a walk around the Market and Powell Streets area of San Francisco to update some interesting vintage photographs from the UC Berkeley Library Archives. On some lazy Sundays, Downtown San Francisco is as quiet, uncrowded, and peaceful as some of the vintage pictures here. (Thumbnail images)

  

Market Street on July 15, 1934 during the Longshoremen’s Strike that shut down the Port of San Francisco: The view is looking toward Grant Avenue. The streets were relatively quiet and empty. The Wells Fargo, the Bankers Investment Building, the Gothic Bank of America, the Chronicle, and the Hobart Buildings on the north side of Market Street can still be seen.

  

A streetcar crew fixes a broken power line in front of the Emporium Department Store in May of 1938: The Humboldt and Call Buildings are in the background.

  

The intersections of Market, Ellis, and Stockton Streets in November of 1939:

  

A solitary figure on the North side of Maiden Lane on July 15, 1934 during the Longshoremen’s Strike, and a solitary figure in the south side of Maiden Lane Sunday: I have no idea what that thing covering up the Dewey Monument in Union Square in the vintage picture was all about; I’ll have to do some research. You can just barely see the monument through the trees in my photo.

  

Powell Street at O’Farrell on July 15, 1934, during the strike: The old Omar Khayyam Restaurant Building is in the right foreground, the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, now called the Grand Beacon, is in the far right background, the St. Francis Hotel is on the left.

  

I don’t know what was going on on January 17, 1939 in San Francisco, when this picture was taken, but the streets were packed! I looked the date up on the internet; that was a Tuesday! That reminds me, the Moody Blues had a song about ‘Tuesday Afternoon’, as well. The view is looking east from Market and 5^th Streets.

 

Back in 2019, I picked up a paperback copy of a reprint of the 1940 book ‘San Francisco, The Bay and its Cities’. The updated book was titled ‘San Francisco in the 1930s, The WPA Guide to the City by the Bay’. Last weekend I found an original 1940 copy of the Works Progress Administration Guide in the bookstore at the San Francisco Main Library. If you’re interested in vintage San Francisco and San Francisco history it’s, like Bogie said in the Maltese Falcon, “The stuff that dreams are made of.” Well, that may be going a little too far, but it’s a very interesting outdated guide, although much of the book’s descriptions are still contemporary, and I wanted to do another post on it. I’ll show in the brackets some of the hundreds of points of interest listed throughout the book using the numbers they were listed, and duplicate the descriptions the original authors used. I’ll also post updated pictures I’ve taken in the past of the locations mentioned. (Thumbnail images)

  

{1. Dominating the Civic Center, the CITY HALL , Van Ness Ave., Po;k, McAllister, and Grove Sts., lifts its gold-embellished dome 308 feet above ground level – 16 feet 2 and 5/8 inches higher than the National Capitol in Washington D. C., as Mayor James Rolph used to boast.}

{2. The CIVIC CENTER PLAZA, Grove Polk, McAllister, and Larkin Sts., with its broad red bricks walks, its fountains playing in circular pools, its great flock of pigeons, its flower beds and box hedges, is surrounded by a row of acacia trees and lined, along Larkin Street, by flagstaffs.}

  

{16. Looming over the Civic Center and uptown San Francisco, the soaring shaft of the 28 story HOTEL EMPIRE, NW. corner Leavenworth an McAllister Sts., embodies the spirit of a new era rising from the old, like the Phoenix of the municipal seal.}

  

{18. The bronze angel atop the NATIVE SONS MONUMENT, Market, Turk, and Mason Sts., holds aloft a book inscribed with the date of California’s admission to the Union: September 9, 1850. Beside the granite shaft a youthful miner shouldering a pick, armed with the holstered six-shooter of his day, waves an American flag. Gift of James D. Phelan, the monument (Douglas Tilden, sculptor) was unveiled on Admission Day, 1897.}

Today the Native Sons Monument is on Market Street and Montgomery.

  

{23. Traces of discoloration in the sandstone near the entrances of the FLOOD BUILDING, NE. corner Market and Powell Sts., recall the earthquake and fire of 1906, which broke windows and blackened the walls of the structure a year after its completion.}

The damaged Flood Building is on the left behind the cable car.

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{21. On the highest assessed piece of land in the city is San Francisco’s largest department store, THE EMPORIUM (open 9:45-5:25), 835 Market Street. The massive, gray sandstone facade, its three arched entrances opening onto a quarter block-long arcade, is ornamented with columns in half-relief rising from the fourth-story level to the balustrade at the roof edge. Inside, an immense glass-domed rotunda, 110 feet in diameter and 110 feet high, ringed by the pillared gallery, rises through four stories to the roof garden.}

  

{36. December, 1914 saw completion of the $656,000 STOCKTON STREET TUNNEL (Michael Shaughnessy, engineer), boring 911 feet through Nob Hill from Bush almost to Sacramento Street to connect downtown San Francisco with Chinatown and North Beach. The tunnel is 36 feet wide and 19 feet high; sodium vapor lights were installed in 1939.}

  

{41. One of the Nation’s oldest jewelry establishments, SHREVE AND COMPANY (open 9-5), NW. corner Grant Ave. and Post St., has been dealing in precious stones and rare objects of gold and silver since 1852. It is the only large downtown store still operating whose advertisement appeared in the San Francisco City Directory of 1856 – when its address was No. 139 Montgomery St.}

  

{79. Of the thousands of commuters who once poured daily through the Ferry Building, for six decades San Francisco’s chief gateway from the east, most now enter the city through the BRIDGE TERMINAL BUILDING, Mission, First, and Fremont Sts. The low-spreading three-story steel-and-concrete structure, completed in 1939 at the cost of $2,300,000, is the terminal for electric interurban trains carrying passengers oveer the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge to the East Bay. Through the terminal pass an estimated number of 60,000 persons daily, 21,000,000 annually.}

The Bridge Terminal Building was where the Salesforce Tower is today.

  

{85. On historic ground stands the HALL OF JUSTICE, SE. corner of Kearny and Washington Sts., facing Portsmouth Plaza. Here stood the famous Eldorado gambling house, and here too, was Dennison’s Exchange Saloon, where the first official Democratic Party meeting was held October 25, 1849, and where the first of the city’s fires broke out two month later.}

  

{104. Where the soft crunch of gravel or the snores of a drowsing panhandler disturbs the quiet of green-terraced ST. MARY’S SQUARE, Pine, Anne, and California Sts., the raucous solicitations of the inmates of brothels once mingled with the bark of rifles in shooting galleries below, and American and British sailors met periodically for bouts and brawls.}

The top painting of Anne Street between the back of the buildings on Grant Avenue and St. Mary’s Square is by Jade Fon. Anne Street is now renamed Quincy Street.

  

{114. What is now OLD CHINATOWN LANE, extending a half-block northward from its entrance near 868 Washington Street – a narrow paved thoroughfare of bazaars and shops characteristic of old Chinatown – was once the “Street of the Gamblers,” a crowded little lane notorious for its gaming rooms and brothels.}

The chase scene in Old Chinatown Lane is from the 1949 film ‘Impact’.

  

{121. Only church in San Francisco whose services are conducted in the Spanish Language is NUESTRA SENORA DE GUADALUPE, 908 Broadway, which derives its name from the shrine erected near Guadalupe, Mexico, in commemoration of the appearance before the peon, Jean Diego, of the Virgin Mary.}

  

{125. Crowning the brow of Telegraph Hill is PIONEER Park, whose paved esplanade and parkway command a stirring panorama of the vast Bay and its shores and the city crowding to the edge of the Peninsula.}

Pioneer Park is directly behind Coit Tower.

  

{126. Twentieth-century commercialism and Old-World tradition go hand in hand at FISHERMAN’S WHARF, foot of Taylor St., where are moored in serried ranks the tiny, bright-painted gasoline boats of the crab fishermen and the tall-masted 70 foot Diesel-engined trawlers of the sardine fleet. The high-sterned junks with the square sails of the Chinese shrimp fishermen who supplied the forty-niners with seafood have long since disappeared.}

  

{143. More universally accepted as a symbol of San Francisco than any other single landmark, the FERRY BUILDING, Embarcadero and Market Street., has served to identify the city in the minds of countless travelers throughout the world. Before the completion of the two bridges across the Bay, this was the gateway to San Francisco, its high clock tower the most conspicuous feature of the skyline to passengers on the lumbering ferries which churned the waters for nearly nine decades.}

  

{150. Venerable MISSION DOLORES (adm. 25 cents including cemetery; open daily May to Sept, 9-5, Oct. to April 9:30-4:30), Dolores, between sixteenth and Seventeenth Sts., its heterogeneous architecture well preserved after more than 150 years, was founded by Padre Francisco Palou. Father Palou has told how the pioneer chapel, dedicated on June 29, 1776 to “our seraphic Father San Francisco” was founded just five days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.}

The top Mission Dolores picture is from the 1958 film ‘Vertigo’.

{229. The OCEAN BEACH, between the Cliff House and Sloat Blvd., is thronged on pleasant days with picnickers, surf and sun bathers, equestrians, and sightseers. The pedestrian esplanade bordering the seawall affords a broad view of the Pacific. A vicious undertow is created by the sudden drop beyond the edge of the surf and annually takes its toll of the unwary.}

  

{277. The PORTALS OF THE PAST, six white marble Ionic Pillars reflected in the tranquil surface of Lloyd Lake, are all that remain of A. N. Towne’s Nob Hill residence burned in the 1906 fire.}

  

{290. The two-story BEACH CHALET (open daily except Mon. 10-6), E. of Great Highway, has a large glassed-in dining room over looking the ocean and the Great Highway. The foyer is ornamented with murals and mosaics by WPA artists.}

  

{291. THE MURPHY WINDMILL (not open to public), N. of South Dr. near SW. corner of park, the second of the park’s two Dutch mills is one of the largest sail-type structures in the world, having a wing spread of 114 feet.}

  

In a non number portion of the book near the end titled Part IV Around the Bay, is part of this description: {Resembling a huge battleship lying just within the Golden Gate, grim Alcatraz Island is known as “The Rock” to the Nation’s underworld, whose desperate criminals are confined within its practically inescapable walls. With a capacity of 800, normally two-thirds filled, this prison for incorrigibles has had such notorious inmates as Al Capone, “Machine Gun” Kelly, and mail robbers Albert Bates, Gene Colson, and Charles “Limpy” Cleaver.}