Author: SF Film Locations

A couple Augusts ago I posted ‘The “real” streets of San Francisco, ‘Part One’ as a follow up to a previous post I had done about the television show “The Streets of San Francisco’. There are some fine websites on the internet posting collections of vintage San Francisco photos; opensfhistory.org, the Charles Cushman Collection, and the Shorpy Archive, to name three of the best. There’s an interesting website I found last fall called ‘San Francisco Pictures’ (clever title). I can’t get much information on who sponsors the site, but they have thousands of good quality vintage San Francisco pictures that they categorize by street name and I’ve been having fun doing then and nows on them. They often name a source for their vintage pictures, and I’ll list those with my post.  We’ll start with the northwestern most picture, ignore Alfred Hitchcock’s advice, and travel south by southeast.

Clay Street looking east from Jones in 1978: Not a big change here, a few more buildings and they finished the Embarcadero Center. (Gosta Knochenhauer)

One block south and three blocks east brings us to Sacramento and Powell Streets, looking east in 1965. (Bousquairol)

We’ll step across Sacramento Street and back three years to 1962. Hmm, a full hour coverage of THE BIG NEWS from KPIX, Channel 5. A long way back from CNN and FOX.

We’ll travel south along Powell Street to Bush Street in a terrific picture from the SFMTA Photo Archive looking north up Nob Hill in 1914.

Looking east along Bush Street from Powell in 1967: I suddenly have a terrific urge to buy a six pack! (Douglas Campbell)

East to Stockton Street and down to Geary St. looking toward Union Square in 1928: It’s nice to see trucks that are older than the one I still own. (Gordon Morales)

One block south to O’Farrell and one block west brings us back to Powell Street looking north in 1961: I’d like to have got a shot over the hood of my car, but I take DO NOT ENTER signs personally. The green building on the right, I know, most of the buildings in the old photo are green, was where the old Omar Khayyam Restaurant used to be.

One block south on Powell and east on Ellis Street brings us here, looking southeast down Ellis Street toward Market Street and the old Humboldt Building in the 1940s: Just behind me is John’s Grill where Sam Spade ordered lunch in the novel ‘The Maltese Falcon’. They’ve opened up with sidewalk dining again. I’ll have to stop by there again for lunch next time I’m in the area and buy a Brigid glass that they sell as souvenirs, named after Brigid O’Shaughnessy, the femme fatale of ‘The Maltese Falcon’. (Bennett Hall)

We’ve headed east on Market Street to Sanome and Sutter Streets in 1963: That looks like a red Ford Fairlane Station Wagon on the right in the vintage photo. (JF Ciesla)

We’ll double back north to Clay Street looking north along Sansome Street in 1929: Why, It hasn’t changed a bit! Actually, you’re not going to find anything left in the vintage photo from this spot today. Some of the buildings in the far background on Sansome may still exist today, but they can’t be seen in my photo. I couldn’t catch a speeding car zipping past in a blur in my picture. (SFMTA Photo Archives)

All of the vintage images in this set were taken on Market Street seventy five years ago, August 14^th, 1945. Forever known as V-J Day, victory over Japan, it was the day Japan surrendered ending World War Two. San Francisco went into an orgy of celebrating and some of it wasn’t pleasant, but you can’t tell from these images. Let’s go back to that day for a moment and remember how important it was. Although I took most of my pictures this past week, I plan to go over to San Francisco on August 14^th and walk around again where my comparisons were taken. Almost certainly, most of the people in the vintage images are gone now, but they had their moment to be proud of and they enjoyed it. It will feel strange again standing in the same spots they did and thinking about their moment in time. San Francisco, and the United States, for that matter, will probably never experience anything like it again.

Celebrants climbing the Admission Day Monument at Turk, Mason, and Market Streets: The view is looking west along Turk Street. The monument was moved to Montgomery and Market Streets in 1977. (San Francisco Chronicle)

The opposite view of the previous picture of the Admission Day Monument from ground level, looking back toward Market Street: (West Virginia & Regional History Center)

A crowd passes by the old Paramount Theater between Jones and Taylor Streets in a scene from wonderful color footage by C. R. Skinner: ‘Junior Miss’ wasn’t getting that much attention that day. Eh, Leonard Maltin only gives the film two and a half stars anyway. The Paramount was just east of the old Crocker Anglo Building on the corner of Jones and Market Streets and is blocking out the view of the Golden Gate Theater, seen in my picture.

Looking past sailors and stalled streetcars toward Mason and Market Streets in more film footage from C. R. Skinner:

Revelers on top of a streetcar stopped at Market and Mason Streets: Behind them is the Golden Gate Theater. (SF Chronicle)

Looking southeast across Market Street toward 6^th in more footage from the C. R. Skinner film: The streetcar on the right has the message KEEP FAITH WITH OUR FIGHT. Many of the buildings in the vintage image are still around, including the tall white building at 6^th and Market Streets, remodeled and green today.

More Streetcar partiers on Market Street looking north toward Stockton Street: West Virginia & Regional History Center)

At the same intersection as the previous picture, a fellow picks up the rear portion of a streetcar, broken off and left on Market Street: (opensfhistory.org)

Looking east along Market Street from Grant Avenue: (worthpoint.com)

I’ve posted this series of images from C. R. Skinner’s footage in the past, but it really is a wonderful period piece. It took place on Market Street at Jones. In the top two photos, the girl in pink doesn’t seem too bothered when a lady near her is hugged by a passing sailor. In the third image another sailor grabs the girl in pink for a hug, placing a cap on her head. In the fourth image, the sailor has the girl in pink bent over in his arms and might being going a little too far. “Hey, buddy, no means no!” In the fifth and bottom picture, she breaks away and throws the cap back at him, angrily. “What’d I do? What’d I Do?”

Here’s the same spot today where “pretty in pink” valiantly fought for her honor.

Many people know about the famous Times Square New York picture of the sailor kissing a nurse on V-J Day. Well, there was a lot of kissing going on in San Francisco on August 14^th 1945 too. This picture was taken at the intersection of Market and Taylor Streets with the Warfield Building in the background. They were a little farther out in Market Street, but if I took my picture that far out a tree would have blocked the Market Street entrance to the Warfield Building, seen in both photos. You can see part of the Warfield sign of Loew’s Warfield Theater that would later become the Fox Warfield Theater, and not to be confused with the glamorous Fox Theater, in the upper right of the vintage picture. I know, you may be wondering the same thing I was; did they get married? Maybe they were dating and did, but possibly they never saw each other again after August 14^th 1945. The little jerk behind them almost spoils the picture. (West Virginia & Regional History Center)

That’s a line from Lawrence W. Harris’s poem written just after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco.

{From the Ferry to Van Ness, you’re a God-forsaken mess. But the damnedest, finest ruins, nothing more and nothing less.}

These are a collection of comparison pictures I took this week from the Embarcadero to Van Ness Avenue. Downtown San Francisco isn’t a “God-forsaken mess”, but it’s not what it used to be right now; there isn’t a lot to do. This inspired me to do an awful take on Mr. Harris’s poem.

{From the Ferry to Van Ness, there is less to do, and less. But the damnedest, finest less, so that’s why I go, I guess.}

Actress Eleanor Parker christens the new California Zephyr train at Pier 3 near the Ferry Building in 1949: She played the wife of Kirk Douglas with an abortion secret two years later in the 1951 film ‘Detective Story’. (Top photo from Cross Country Chronicles, middle photo from filmsofthefifties.com)

Market Street, looking west from 3^rd, looks like the early 1960s: (SFMTA)

Grant Avenue looking toward Sacramento Street in 1961: (Pinterest / hemming.com)

Grant Avenue looking toward California Street in Chinatown in 1957: (fineartamerica.com)

California Street looking down from Powell Street on the top of Nob Hill in 1961: The Rolls Garage was originally the old Crest Garage, demolished in 2018. (Street Scenes of San Francisco in the 1960s)

Market Street in front of the old Emporium Department Store, now Westfield Center, in the 1970s: Westfield Center reopened for customers late in June, but shut down again earlier this week due to a spike in COVID-19 cases. (flickr.com)

The cable car turnaround at Powell and Market Streets in the 1970s: The vintage photo from opensfhistory.org should be labeled ‘The Rolling Stones meet Crocodile Dundee’. Earlier this month while I was “out in the field” I was able to enjoy seeing a cable car rattle down Powell Street toward the turnaround for a maintenance run. People on Powell Street cheered as the cable car went past.

Work is finishing up repairing “the damndest, finest ruins” during May of 1909 in a SFMTA Archive photo from the Facebook page Lost San Francisco. The photo was taken at Market and 5^th Streets looking toward the Flood Building.

City Hall in the 1920s: I’m suddenly hungry for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The vintage picture was taken farther back from where I’m standing, but that area has been closed off for temporary homeless shelters due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. (worthpoint.com)

Fulton Street looking past Franklin toward Van Ness Avenue and the City Hall in the 1940s: The arched building on the left, just visible past the tree in my photo, is the Veterans Building where the United Nations was created 75 years ago last month. (flickr.com)

“It’s July, and I have hope in who I am becoming”

Well, if that was Charlotte Erickson’s allegory for halfway through the year / halfway through life, I hope she became who she wanted to be. Me, I passed that turnpike awhile back, and right now I just have hopes of things becoming the way they used to be.

Although I enjoyed the stretch, a Tax Day in July seems unpatriotic, (my take on a freepik.com cartoon) and pretty girls looking a combination of Uncle Sam and Jesse James made for an unusual 4^th of July. Anyway, tax season ended this week and I did what I usually do after the deadline to file tax returns, I went over to San Francisco to take pictures.

I approached the San Francisco City & County Limit the way I often do, on the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. The vintage picture was taken on the opening day of the bridge, November 12^th 1936. Treasure Island was still under construction then. This whole portion of the bridge was replaced in 2013.

Stopped for lunch on the Marina Green, seen in the 1950s in a cool looking vintage picture from the San Francisco Remembered Facebook page: (Lily Castello)

Looking across the Marina Yacht Harbor toward the Palace of Fine Arts during the 1950s; yachts have gotten bigger since then. See if you can spot which one is mine. “Knock it off, Tim!” (Vintage Everyday)

Looking through the arch of Pier 43 toward Pier 45 where the Liberty Ship the Jeremiah O’Brien was docked before the disastrous fire at the pier last May forced the ship to relocate. I’m really unhappy about that. You can see the fire damage to the pier.

Speaking of ships, this has to be one of the spookiest San Francisco pictures I’ve seen. That’s the SS Ohioan, shipwrecked and stranded on the rocks behind the old Sutro Bathhouse in 1936. In December of the following year, what was left of the ship broke in two and sank into the Pacific Ocean. (ebay.com)

A vintage picture from worthpoint.com shows the stranded ship being pounded into the rocks by the surf. Salvage efforts continued on the ship for over a year before she sank.

Looking toward Ghirardelli Square during the 1960s: The Ghirardelli letters on the roof were taken down recently for restoration. Just as I was getting ready to snap the picture, a MUNI bus pulled up and the driver got out. Oh, well, we have to rise above. (ebay.com)

The beginning of an exciting summer; and why not? True, there’ll be no 4^th of July gatherings, no county fairs, still no Disneyland, and I won’t be hanging out at the beach checking out the girls; which won’t be a problem because they never paid much attention to me anyway. Still, the weather will be warmer, and San Francisco is as exciting of a place to visit during the summer right now as anywhere else. These are a collection of pictures I took in San Francisco during the first week of summer.

Harrison Street, looking east from Fremont Street in 1956: You can’t see the last tower on the San Francisco side of the Bay Bridge from here anymore. The FedEx and utility truck block the view down toward the Embarcadero where Pier 24, demolished in the 1990s, once was. That’s the old Hill’s Brothers Coffee Building down the street at the bottom left. (San Francisco Pictures Blog)

The Columbus Statue at Coit Tower during the 1960s: The statue was taken down and put in storage earlier in June. (ebay.com)

Mason Street, between California and Pine Streets: If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to drive while wearing 3D glasses, the vintage photo from the 1950s will give you an idea. (ebay.com)

Grant Avenue at Washington Street in 1973: They’re slowly starting to trickle back into Chinatown as well, and a few of the gift shops are starting to reopen too. (worthpoint.com)

This building used to be the Telephone Exchange Building where a lot of the to and from long distance calls in San Francisco were directed by operators receiving them. It was considered so important that after Pearl Harbor it was sandbagged to minimize damage in the event of the Japanese bombing San Francisco.  Those would be great against vandals today, but they have some other kind of metal temporary doors and windows guarding the building now.

Tourists are starting to come back to Lombard Street slowly, as well. They’re getting close to the level of the vintage picture taken in 1975. After I took my picture, I walked past four girls grouping together for a selfie. I gave them a thumbs up and said, “A masterpiece!” and they giggled. It made me feel good, like the old days in San Francisco. You Know, like four months ago. (The Houston Chronicle)

The bunting on the Ferry Building in the opensfhistory.org picture fits right in with the 4^th of July coming up this weekend, but it was actually taken February 18^th 1939 celebrating the opening day of the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island.

Geary St. at Kearny, near Market during the 1950’s: The entrance to the old Chronicle Building is on the right in both photos. I can take a straighter picture than the vintage picture, but not nearly as interesting of a one. Hmm, ‘COLONICS-X-RAY’, I wonder if chiropractic doctors still offer that service anymore. (worthpoint.com)

I’ve wanted to do this one for awhile; Kearny Street at Columbus Avenue, (at least for now) in 1910. That’s the Sentinel Building, owned by Francis Ford Coppola, on the left in both pictures. (San Francisco Pictures Blog)

Russian Hill from Telegraph Hill in the 1800s: They’ve put up a few more shacks around here since then. You can just see the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge through the fog in my picture.

As I mentioned in a post early in the spring, the shelter-in-place proclamation that went into effect in the Bay Area on March 17^th had turned Market Street into something of an urban nightmare. With workers, shoppers, and visitors gone, a lot of people who have been prowling around Market Street since March 17^th are not friendly people. Months before the riots of June, buildings along Market Street were boarded up to prevent the windows being smashed out. The eerie quiet of San Francisco’s main thoroughfare mixed with the yelling from many demented or angry street people is something I’ll never forget. However, since the beginning of June more people have come back to Market Street who are not there to cause trouble or aggressively panhandle, and the street has become a little friendlier since my March 23^rd post. Yesterday, Juneteenth Day, I walked along Market Street from 5^th Street to the Ferry Building, and for the first time in months, I smiled at some of people that I socially distanced from as a precaution, not because of a threat. These are comparison pictures I took along the way of old postcards of Market Street from the early 1900s.

Looking east from 5^th Street toward the Flood Building: The Emporium sign on the building on the right now has Bloomingdale’s painted on it. The domed Humboldt Building, built in 1908, is in the background of both images.

I’m closer now to the Flood Building and the old Emporium Building on the right. The crowned Call Building, remodeled and now called Central Tower, can be seen behind the Humboldt Building.

I’m in front of the Emporium Building now. If it wasn’t for the shade, I’d have been a lot happier with this picture. Many of the old buildings, like the West Bank Building, the Phelan Building and the Gothic looking Mutual Savings Bank Building, are still there.

4^th Street and closer to the Humboldt Building seen in a postcard from 1915:

Market Street at Grant Avenue: This one has the postmark on it. Four Buildings still seen on the right from the same period as the postcard are the Hearst Building, the Monadnock Building, the Palace Hotel, and the Metropolis Trust and Savings Bank Building. I’m standing near the old pillared Union Trust Building.

Lotta’s Fountain at Kearny and Market Streets; at a little different angle now, but in the same spot where it was originally placed in 1875:

The Palace Hotel, rebuilt in 1909 after the original grand hotel, built in 1875 and visited by the likes of Ulysses S. Grant and Enrico Caruso, who was staying at the hotel when the 1906 earthquake struck, was destroyed during that disaster.

I ended up at the Ferry Building, looking past where the old pedestrian footbridge was toward the Southern Pacific Building. The crowd of demonstrators in my picture were gathering to commemorate Juneteenth Day, the annually recognized day of the end of the slavery of African Americans in the Confederate States. They took over Market Street for awhile too, but they didn’t cause any trouble or hurt anybody.

Well, we’re a week away from the summer solstice. Spring, and the things that I look forward to each year; the end of Tax Season, baseball games, Disneyland, the Rowell Ranch Rodeo Chili Cook-Off, and the opening of the Alameda County Fair were just a few of spring traditions I like that were closed or  cancelled starting on March 17^th. Even St. Patrick’s Day, which really isn’t in spring but to me represents the arrival of spring, was quiet and depressing. On February 29^th 2020 I was invited to the 40^th annual meeting of the Institute for Historical Study at the Dimond Branch Library in Oakland. I had recently been approved for membership in the society, and I was proud to be there. They had a number of upcoming events I was looking forward to enjoying, which, of course, have been postponed right now. I don’t think anyone in that room anticipated what was coming or how the world would change in just a few weeks, and spring would slip away a bad memory. These are a collection of pictures I posted during spring seasons of happier years. Many people are suffering heartbreak  to due to COVID-19 at this time, so I don’t want this post to seem like a complaint; it’s just reminiscence.

March 21^st 2016, the first full day of spring: San Francisco gets lots of rain in the spring. The vintage picture at 1^st and Market Streets was taken during the 1930s. (San Francisco Main Library History Room)

March 21^st 2016: The vintage picture from the Shorpy Archives was taken at the old El Capitan Theater on Mission Street between 19^th and 20^th Streets.

April 2^nd 2017: The restored Dutch Windmill on the northwest corner of Golden Gate Park.

April 23^rd 2016: Ocean Beach and the old gingerbread Cliff House, destroyed in a fire in 1907. (The Cliff House Project website)

April 27^th 2016: Kids “nipping the fender” on a streetcar at South Van Ness and 26^th Street, (mislabeled in the vintage picture as being at 26^th and Army Street) in 1943. (Charles Smallwood)

May 2^nd 2017: Grant Avenue and Sacramento Street in Chinatown in the 1930s.

May 6^th 2015: Lotta’s Fountain at Kearny and Market Streets in a wonderful vintage photo from the early 1900s.

May 13^th 2018: The view from Corona Heights in a comparison picture I took on Mother’s Day in May of 2018, back when the word corona wasn’t so scary. The vintage picture was taken in the 1960s. Mother’s Day was another spring tradition lost during the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020. (Michael Bry)

May 13^th 2018, the Cliff House in the 1950’s: I sure will be glad when that opens up again. (virginiapicks)

May 18^th 2016: Sleeping Beauty Castle on Disneyland’s opening day, July 17^th 1955. I can hardly wait to get back there as well. I don’t think crowds will bother me as much anymore after the lonely emptiness right now at places I enjoy going to, like Disneyland.

May 23^rd 2017, Yosemite National Park: May and October are my two favorite times to visit Yosemite. In May the waterfalls are spectacular due to the runoff of the melting snows from the mountains. October is the best month to catch the fall colors of Yosemite before it gets too cold. I missed the park in May of this year, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for October.

May 30^th 2016, at what was then called AT&T Park: To paraphrase Jack Nicholson as McMurphy in the 1975 movie ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, “Somebody give me a hotdog (at the ballpark) before I die!” The vintage picture is of Willie Mays knocking one out of Candlestick Park during the 1960’s. (Barnaby Conrad and Bay Area Photographers Society)

May 30^th 2016: Ah, the Jeremiah O’Brien moored at Pier 45; she’s not there anymore. The pier to the right of where the Liberty Ship was docked at was destroyed in a huge fire, and the ship has moved over to Pier 35 for the time being. The top photo is a Philippine cargo shop on the waterfront in the 1950s. (Phil Palmer)

June 1^st 2017: The Tea House at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. The vintage picture from the 1940s was when the name of the garden was changed to the Oriental Tea Garden after Pearl Harbor until 1952. The name Oriental Tea Garden would cause a reverse offense from many Asian people nowadays.

June 9^th 2016: Janis Joplin on the corner of Cole and Haight Streets in 1967.   (buzzfeed.com)

June 14^th 2016: The cable car turnaround at Powell and Market Streets, seen in a vintage picture from the late 1930s. And wouldn’t it be nice to go for a ride on a cable car again someday.

June 18^th 2016: I’ll end my spring look back at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, another cancellation in 2020 due to the pandemic. I might be able to go to Disneyland someday in the near future, but for this annual tradition I‘ll have to wait for another year.

Not to be confused with the ‘The Fool on the Hill’, although sometimes lately my head is in a cloud like his is. That probably comes from breathing too much of my own carbon dioxide in my safety mask. I was feeling a little restless in the office yesterday, so I decided to head over to Telegraph Hill after my last client left. It’s peaceful and quiet up there and there’s been plenty of parking lately, although there were a lot more people on top of “Telygraft Hill” yesterday than there has been in months.

Sailors enjoying the view from Pioneer Park behind Coit Tower, either in the late 1930s or during World War Two; I couldn’t get a date on this fine picture. (mutualart.com)

I’m assuming the artist Luigi Kasimir wouldn’t have drawn this terrific sketch looking northwest from the steps of Coit Tower in the 1930s if the portable bathroom and concession stand were there then, the trees blocked the view like today, and the balustrade wasn’t there. You can barely see the Marin County hills through the trees and glare in my picture. (henningfineart.com)

1360 Montgomery Street, the most famous apartment building on Telegraph Hill: It was here that Humphrey Bogart hid out with Lauren Bacall in the 1947 film ‘Dark Passage’. (twitter.com, posted by Cory Doctorow)

Looking down the Filbert Steps toward Montgomery Street in 1959: You have to get a little closer to the street to see the view from here today. I picked up a dragonfly at the top of my picture. (Gene Wright)

So, where will I go in San Francisco on a warm June afternoon? The Shopping District of San Francisco, which has been practically a ghost town since the shelter-in-place was ordered, has been attacked by vandals recently, as elsewhere, and is not a friendly area right now. These are not protesters, they’re not activists, and they are not a movement; they’re just thugs, men and women, all different races. They’re the kind of people that parents hope their children will never grow up to become. Fisherman’s Wharf isn’t a destination, either. Still closed because of the pandemic, an enormous fire in Pier 45 has made situation there even worse, and came close to destroying the World War Two Liberty Ship, the Jeremiah O’Brien. Golden Gate Park is still beautiful at 150 years of age, but because of the fresh air and safe distancing, it’s near about the only place worth visiting in San Francisco right now and sometimes even more crowded than usual. So I went to my getaway place that I’ve been going to since I was 15, Ocean Beach and the Cliff House area. The looters haven’t reached here yet, COVid-19 hasn’t made this a dangerous area, and there have been no major fires here. These are a collection of vintage drawings and postcards I’ve updated while walking around the northern side of Ocean Beach.

Looking toward Ocean Beach and the Great Highway from the Cliff House in the early 1900s: With some shelter-in-place restrictions lifted slightly at the beginning of June, parking is allowed again at Ocean Beach. You can see the Dutch and Murphy Windmills in Golden Gate Park in the upper right. (Pinterest)

The Great Highway from Sutro Heights with Chutes-at-the-Beach in the 1920s: (eBay posted on pinterest)

The fire that destroyed the old gingerbread Cliff House in 1907, seen from Sutro Heights: (gendisasters.com)

This picture I took a few years back of the Sutro Bathhouse ruins lines up pretty good with the old drawing of what it looked like. The concrete squared ruin in the lower left of my picture was where the pump house, seen with the tall chimney in the vintage drawing, was located. (eventbrite.com)

The misnamed Seal Rocks from the Cliff House: There were never seals on Seal Rocks, they were sea lions, and they’re gone now. (seeninsanfrancisco.com)

A group of people on Ocean Beach, probably around 1910: That’s the present day Cliff House built after 1907, and people stopped dressing like that by World War One. I don’t like the looks of that little toughie in the front of the crowd.

“So, you don’t like my knickerbockers, huh? Well, what are you gonna do about it?” (hippostcard.com)

Ocean Beach, Seal Rocks, the Cliff House, and Sutro Heights in the early 1900s: (sanfranciscodays.com)

In order to achieve a perfect line up redoing a vintage photo I would have to be standing in the same spot the original photographer was standing when I take my comparison picture, which might be almost impossible to determine. Anyway, I gave it a good try over the Memorial Day Weekend, and came pretty close at times.

This one looked perfect, at first; the gap between the Dewey Monument and The St. Francis Hotel on the left matches up, as does the gap between the monument and the Chancellor Hotel to its right in the picture. The St. Francis Hotel in my photo lines up nicely with the vintage picture, and the angle of the two crosswalks in the photos line up close, although they’re probably not painted today exactly where they were in 1953. However, on a closer look, the Dewey Monument is a little higher up in the vintage picture. Maybe a few steps farther forward might have done it. The 1953 picture from the Charles Cushman Collection was taken at the southeast corner of Geary St. and Stockton Street looking toward Union Square.

Heading up to Nob Hill, I thought my quest was going to be short and sweet. When I put them together, this 1961 photo looking toward the Pacific Union Club on California looked perfect, until I got to the roof; the remaining cornice on the roof balustrade is out of line with the building in the background in the my picture. (San Francisco Pictures Blog / blogspot.com)

Walking down Powell approaching Pine Street, I got another one pretty close. The cable car tracks aren’t laid out exactly where they were in the 1970s picture posted on Pinterest, so my picture wouldn’t line up very well standing directly between the tracks, as in the vintage picture. Also, I needed to be closer so it doesn’t count.

This 1967 picture is looking back up Nob Hill from Pine and California Streets toward the Fairmont Hotel.  I’m close here too. However, if those are the same manhole covers in both pictures, I’m a little off. That’s what people usually say about me anyway. (San Francisco Pictures Blog / blogspot.com)

I’m back downtown and looking west on Ellis Street from Stockton. Notice the John’s Grill Restaurant in the two photos. Both pictures were taken on the corner of 4^th and Markets Streets. The Crocker Anglo Building, remodeled, is still there but the building between it and John’s Grill has been replaced. The angle and width of the Crocker Anglo Building are good and it lines up with the windows on the Flood Building on the background, but the two buildings and John’s Grill in my picture aren’t directly beneath the three buildings in vintage picture. Conclusion, I’m not standing quite in the same spot as the photographer in vintage photo. Duh! (Opensfhistory.org and outsidelands.org)

Wandering down Market Street to Grant Avenue in the mid 1950: I liked my chances with this one, but it didn’t work out. I tried to get the old Hearst Examiner Building on the right to line up close with the even older Call Building across 3rd Street, but it looks like I was too far back. You can’t see the Palace Hotel in the background from here today through the trees, so I’m safe there. However, back across Market Street where the old Wells Fargo Building on Grant Avenue is, well, like Eli Wallach said to “The Man” in the 1958 film ‘The Lineup’ “that’s where the job went to pieces.” I’m too close! Yet when I moved farther back to get a good angle on the old bank building, the previous mentioned buildings across Market Street were  way out of sync. Oh, well.

I’ll end my journey here because I don’t think I’ll ever get a perfect line up, but this one matches up about the closest. The old blurry picture was taken on the southwest corner of Powell and Sutter Streets in 1949. The Sears Food Restaurant has moved one block behind me between Sutter and Post Streets. (San Francisco Pictures Blog / blogspot.com)