Author: SF Film Locations

This is another collection of then and nows covering the television series ‘The Streets of San Francisco’ that ran from 1972 to 1977. These are episodes from the premier season of 1972. The first pictures are a brief setup with some relatively placid location scenes from a few episodes, and the last collection covers ‘In the Midst of Strangers’, which I think is one of the best episodes of the series. Cable cars will show up a few times in this post. There’s some confusion about the actual date, but on either today or tomorrow, Andrew Hallidie ran the first cable car up Clay Street 145 years ago.

Michael Douglas played Inspector Steve Keller. In ‘The first Day of Forever’ he is assigned to be a bodyguard to a call girl played by Janice Rule who has been targeted for murder by one of her “clients”. Keller is cold and distant toward her at first, but eventually develops affection for her. Here they pass the Fisherman’s Wharf Boat Lagoon with Alioto’s and #9 Fishermen’s Grotto Restaurants behind them.

Karl Malden played Lieutenant Michael Stone. Here he is at Aquatic Park where the Hyde street cable cars turn around in ’45 Minutes from Home’. Hey, that is the cable car you’re looking at, Lieutenant, right? My kind of cop! The corner here has been reconfigured a bit where the cable cars arrive and depart.

In the same episode, Stone meets up with Keller and they talk shop awhile as they walk down Beach Street.

“Don’t look now, but I think there’s a hippie behind us!”

“Cover me while I flash him the peace sign!”

They get into their unmarked patrol car and turn onto Larkin Street pursuing a hot tip; probably another restaurant that serves good chili dogs, they track down a lot of these in the series. They pass by Ghirardelli Square on the right.

At the end of ‘45 Minutes from Home’ they park on Grant Avenue and walk into Chinatown. I wonder if they still make Olympia Beer! That’s a historic and forgotten building on the left behind them. During World War Two it was the main telephone exchange center and was considered so important sand bags were stacked at the entrance to protect it from Japanese bombs that were expected to be dropped on San Francisco after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Here is a vintage picture of the building during World War Two. (SF Chronicle)

“That was the end of a good case, buddy boy! This coke and burger in exotic Chinatown are on me.”

Their investigations often led them to ordinary locations that are hard to track down. In this scene from ‘Timelock’ they cross a street and enter into a building with addresses on the entrance of an unnamed street looking for a suspect. I was afraid that I was going to have to do some homework to locate this spot, but Lt. Stone made the job easy with his check-in call. “We’re at 2207 Taylor Street.” Thanks, Lieutenant!”

The rest of this collection is devoted to ‘In the Midst of Strangers’. As I mentioned at the opening, I think it is one of the best hours the show has to offer. Most of the episode takes place in and around Union Square, albeit a Union Square of a long time ago. The episode shows a vibrant but small location in a big city and creates an atmosphere that probably wasn’t even the way it was in 1972, but should have been. It opens up with a northwestern view of Union Square from the roof of the City of Paris Department Store. This was the way Union Square looked from World War Two until it was remodeled in 2002. My picture was taken from the Cheesecake Factory on top of Macy’s, the closest I could get to a comparison. The plot involves three bad guys staying in a suite at the St. Francis Hotel overlooking the park who systematically rob people passing by or through Union Square after studying their movements by telescope or eavesdropping on them while lingering in the park, to find the ones ripe for the picking. This was two years before Gene Hackman made that kind of activity famous here in the 1974 film ‘The Conversation’.

David Wayne plays an elderly and popular newspaper salesman who’s friendly with just about everybody who comes to Union Square. His station is here on the northwest side of the square back when one of the entrances to the underground parking garage was still there. Later in the episode Wayne will be robbed by the thugs of three thousand dollars of his savings.

In one “feel good” scene, a cable car passing by the St. Francis Hotel on Powell Street waits while Wayne sells newspapers to friendly riders on the car. People were just trying to get on a cable car in my picture at the spot, and nobody would have been interested in buying a paper.

Look at some of the stores on Post Street in 1972, like Gumps, Bonds Suits, and Florsheim Shoes.

From a robbery to a kill: The crooks spot a victim going into a jewelry store on Post Street and one of the gang played by Robert Foxworth follows him across the intersection of Post and Stockton Streets into the northeast entrance of Union square.

After buying a newspaper from David Wayne the victim boards a cable car on Powell Street at the front end while Foxworth climbs on the back. Now watch the number 525 cable car as it climbs Nob Hill.

After passing Sutter Street the cable car changes to number 510. Of course, the one in my picture changed from number 12 to number 7, but I’m not going to pretend it’s the same cable car.

By the time the victim’s cable car reaches the crest of Nob Hill it’s been demoted to number 509 and the man behind the victim has changed his clothes!

The victim should have stayed on the magic cable car. When he gets off at California Street he’s hustled into the yellow LTD approaching on the left by Foxworth and driven by his two accomplices. They drive down California Street and turn into Joice Alley. When the man being robbed resists he’s killed by Foxworth. He didn’t even get to read the paper Wayne sold him.

After Wayne is robbed Stone and Keller peruse Union Square looking for clues. Behind them are Maiden Lane and the City of Paris Department Store. The City of Paris was demolished in 1979.

Wayne spots one of the men who robbed him and follows him to the room where the rest of the gang is staying. After nearly getting caught and losing his life he contacts Stone and Keller, but the crooks have left before they can get there. The chase is on.

After a race through San Francisco the bad guys turn down this street in the Presidio.

The road leads to Fort Point, built just before the Civil War.

They should have taken a lesson from Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt who tried to hide from the police here in the 1950 crime movie ‘The Man Who Cheated Himself’. There’s no way out from here. (Film image from Rotten Tomatoes)

The crooks drive into the fort through the main entrance followed by Keller and Stone. The suspects exit their car and begin shooting at the two officers.

Jane Wyatt and Lee J. Cobb drove into Fort Point here as well. (Film image from backstageweplayers.org)

As the villains head up to the roof of the fort, “someone’s sneakin’ ‘round the corrrrrner”.

A well placed shot takes care of one heading up. They have some kind of ramp on the ground below this spot so I couldn’t get an exact lineup.

One down and two to go: Stone and Keller follow the rest up to the top.

Foxworth makes a dash along the roof of the fort. This scene appears to have been filmed late in the afternoon.

Lt. Stone is not about to let Foxworth get away. He sets himself and takes aim.

Stone, having to make a tracking shot with the sun in his eyes, fires and down goes Foxworth near the old lighthouse. Two down and one to go.  I could have got him myself if my finger was loaded.

Jane Wyatt and Lee J. Cobb didn’t have any better luck escaping from police when they tried to hide up in the lighthouse in ‘The Man Who Cheated Himself’. (Film image from the Movie Gourmet)

The third suspect wisely decides to give himself up.

And so Lieutenant Stone and Inspector Keller tidy up another case and head for the nearest chili dog.

These are a few more of my favorite then and nows from postings in the past. Some of them are a favorite because I liked the way they turned out, some of them because they were fun to do, and some of them because they were an adventure.

“Hippie Hill” in Golden Gate Park in 1967: “Save up all of your bread, and fly Trans Love Airways to San Francisco U.S.A.”  George Harrison and Pattie Boyd sat on this hill while George played a few songs with a borrowed guitar in 1967.

The old Hall of Justice on Kearney Street in 1958 from a Charles Cushman photo: Both pictures were taken from Portsmouth Square. This building appeared regularly in television shows such as ‘Lineup’ and ‘Ironside’, and many crime pictures like ‘Impact’. ‘The Man Who Cheated Himself’ and ‘The Lady from Shanghai’. The old hall was demolished in 1967.

Kearny Street at Fresno Alley as it climbs Telegraph Hill in the 1940’s from a Fred Lyon picture: It’s still quiet around here today, but kids don’t slide down the street anymore and the view that fellow is enjoying is a lot different today.

Two aerial views of Market Street from the Ferry Building at the end of the 1960’s: The bottom picture is from a postcard I bought when I was in high school.

A football game between the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers at Kezar Stadium in 1957: I hope that was just wholesome fun and not a mugging that I failed to report in my picture. (SF Chronicle)

Two members of the posse that shot Bonnie and Clyde to death at this spot earlier that day pose for a picture: This is on a lonely road outside Gibsland, Louisiana. The road winding away behind them is where Bonnie and Clyde drove up the hill to this spot here where they were ambushed.

Stunned and confused people at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22^nd 1963, shortly after President John Kennedy was shot passing through here: This November will be the 55^th anniversary of that day.

A one armed officer from the army tries to recruit Harold into joining while shell shocked, crippled and blind veterans pass by  up on Sutro Heights in the black comedy from 1971, ‘Harold and Maude’.

Well, that’s just rude! Ray Harryhausen’s giant octopus gobbles up the Golden Gate Bridge in the movie ‘It Came from Beneath the Sea’ from 1955.

Candlestick Park in the 1960’s, and on two visits that I made to the old stadium in 2014 and in 2015, shortly after it was demolished.

The Bride of Frankenstein (Elsa Lanchester) and the Hunchback of Notre Dame (Charles Laughton) at the Main Street Cinema in Disneyland in the 1950’s: (Disneyland, the First Quarter Century)

Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park: I went out on that rock in July of 2016, but I didn’t go all the way to the edge like this fellow. I like to say that it was because there was no one there to take my picture, but I think it was more than that. As of this writing, Yosemite is being evacuated now due to a major fire.

Police question Roman Rodriguez after he murdered Hilda Pagan in Dolores Park in 1952, from Hannah Clayborn’s collection of historic San Francisco pictures. A top portion was added to the building where the murder occurred and was a restroom and snack bar when I took my picture. The building was demolished in 2015. I’ve always wondered if the lady with her hands to her face was Hilda’s mother.

People lining the walkways of the Golden Gate Bridge to watch ships returning home at the end of World War Two in 1945: I was lucky enough to catch a similar looking fog when I took my picture. (Images of America Series)

The USS Tennessee sails into the Bay under an unfinished Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930’s, and the battleship USS Iowa sails out to the Pacific Ocean under the bridge in May of 2012: This was almost certainly the last time a battleship will sail under the Golden Gate Bridge.

I always liked this bustling picture taken at Divisadero and California Streets in the early 1900’s from the San Francisco History Room collection. They spelled Divisadero wrong, or maybe they spell it wrong today.

Downtown San Francisco burning during the 1906 Earthquake and Fire: My picture was taken from the St. Francis Hotel.

My best friend ‘Danny’ picking up the scent of Buffalo Bill’s horse at Ocean Beach near the Cliff House: (William F. Cody Archive)

Charles W. Cushman was an amateur color photographer who took color slides around the United States and Europe from the 1930’s to the 1970’s. Although his travels were worldwide, he kept coming back to San Francisco during his life to take photos. Class is where you find it. Many of his San Francisco pictures were taken at ordinary places in the City that weren’t necessarily scenic locations, although he took many pictures at more popular spots, as well. The Indiana University has a collection of his slides on the internet. The pictures in this post are from that collection. Although I’ve posted a number of his pictures on my blog in the past, I’m not able to find a lot of information about Charles Cushman. He had a stormy marriage to his wife Jean who appears in some of his pictures, and at one time, she shot herself and him in a suicide attempt. They both survived. Cushman died in 1972. Let’s travel around San Francisco a little to some of the places Cushman captured with his camera long ago.

We’ll start out on Market Street near 3^rd Street in 1957 looking toward the Ferry Building. The two dominant buildings on the right, the Southern Pacific Building and the PG&E Building, can be seen in my picture peeking out behind the newer Market Street buildings. Like most of Cushman’s photos, there’s a lot to look at, like the long gone Mobile Gas Structure and an old Greyhound Station.

We’ll head up Nob Hill to the Pacific Union Club on California at Mason Streets in 1952. Sometimes, I think the old cars are the best thing about Cushman’s pictures.

We move down Nob Hill to a cable car festival passing Sutter at Powell Street in 1955. It’s not likely that cable cars will ever be decorated like this again.

One block south from the previous picture and we’re on the corner of Powell and Post Streets during the Republican Presidential Convention that was held at the Cow Palace in 1964. We’re probably a long way from another Republican Convention hosted in San Francisco, as well.

Now we’ll go to a couple of those odd spots Cushman selected. This is on Jones Street looking toward Pacific Avenue and the valley between Nob and Russian Hills in 1952. Notice that the ‘New Russian Hills Market’, which hasn’t been “new” in a long time, was there on the northeast corner of Pacific and Jones in 1952, and still is.

We’ve moved over one block east from the previous picture to Taylor Street looking toward Pacific Avenue in 1952. The 76 Gas Station is gone and a tree hides where Taylor makes its climb up Russian Hill.

We’re meandering westward now. This is on the northeast corner of Laguna and Jackson Streets in 1952. I did a post on December 5^th 2015 that covered the Whittier Mansion seen here. It was the German consulate before the Pearl Harbor attack. After war was declared between USA and Germany, government agents broke in and discovered that they had been spying on shipping movements through a telescope. Also, in 1958, Eli Wallach, “Dancer” killed his second victim in this mansion in the movie ‘Lineup’. PS, it’s also haunted! Well, of course; it would have to be! A building on the southeast corner of the intersection that wasn’t here when Cushman took his picture caused me to move out a little into Laguna Street to get the whole mansion in my picture.

Cushman traveled up to Pacific Heights for this shot looking east along Broadway from Baker Street in 1952. That Colonial looking mansion on the left was where Lana Turner supposedly lived in the 1960 thriller film ‘Portrait in Black’.

That’s all that’s left of the little cluster of buildings below Sutro Heights along the Great Highway between Balboa Street and the Cliff House. Charles Cushman took this picture in 1952. If you can zoom in on the vintage photo, you’ll see that the last building on the left housed the arcade attractions from the Musée Mécanique. When the buildings were demolished in the 1960’s, the attractions, many of them originally from Sutro’s Bathhouse, were displayed in a small room at the back of the Cliff House. When the restaurant was renovated in the new millennium, the items were moved to Pier 45 at Fisherman’s Wharf, their current home.

Ocean Beach in 1961: He’s saying, “Don’t be shy, honey. You look great in your scandalously shocking 1961 swimsuit!” The vintage picture was taken looking toward Balboa Street and Playland-at-the-Beach at the Great Highway near where Fulton Street ends. I put the family somewhere around here; that looks like the the seawall ramp behind them. You can just see what looks like the top of a Playland sign peeking out over the seawall on the right. The building with the hoops on the top in the the upper right center of the 1961 picture was where the Playland Merry-Go-Round was. On the far left of the vintage photo picture is ‘Skateland’ in the building that was originally called ‘Topsy’s Roost’. The sitting steps of the seawall were removed by the 1980’s.

This weekend is the annual Charlie Chaplin Festival in Niles. They get better and better at this each year. I stopped by Saturday to watch some of the movies they were showing, take the walking tour, and do a little exploring of my own.

The walking tour group met at 11:00 AM in front of the Niles Museum. This was the same building that Chaplin premiered the five movies he made in Niles in 1915.

There were plenty of Charlie Chaplins around to take selfies with. Charlie is the one on the right.

The group headed over to the corner of G Street and Niles Blvd. where the old Essanay Studio used to be. Chaplin filmed a confrontation scene with a cop on this same corner one hundred and three years ago in his silent short ‘The Champion’.

This is an aerial view of the old studio. The houses behind the studio were bungalows built for the stars filming there.

The group stopped on the corner of G and Second Streets where the vintage picture was taken as the tour guide explained the history of the bungalows. Although remodeled, they’re all still there. The two on the far right in both pictures were taken over by “Broncho Billy” Anderson for his office when he was making westerns in Niles.

Long before there was John Wayne or Gary Cooper, there was Gilbert “Bronco Billy” Anderson, the movie’s first cowboy star. Anderson made his westerns in Niles from 1911 until 1915.

A western street was constructed behind the studio to film outdoor scenes like this one in the top photo from ‘Broncho Billy’s Narrow Escape’ from 1912. The bottom picture was where the western street was located.

Bronco Billy’s barn survived until 1980 when it was demolished. A lot of gunfights in his films took place here. The barn was across the alley from the other old barn on the left that’s still there. Broncho Billy’s barn was on the right behind the fence where the violets are.

Besides movie locations the tour visited other sites like the old Niles Court House and the convenient Niles Jail next door to it at I and Second Streets.

The iconic scene where the brokenhearted little tramp wanders off into Niles Canyon at the end of ‘The Tramp’ from 1915 was filmed 1.8 miles into Niles Canyon from Mission Blvd. or so I was told by the historians on hand. It’s too dangerous to stop on the road, so I took my picture from the car. It looks like the same spot to me.

Mark Twain should have said “The most crowded Saturday I ever  spent was on a summer’s day at Fisherman’s Wharf.” It definitely was crowded yesterday, but not too crowded to have fun or to update some more terrific pictures from http://opensfhistory.org/, many of them from long ago summers.

The #9 Fishermen’s Grotto Restaurant certainly looks different than it did here in 1935. The cars looked better back then but I think the building is an improvement today.

The Fisherman’s Wharf boat lagoon in the 1940’s, looking toward Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower: Every time I see pictures of that enormous gas tank that used to be near Fisherman’s Wharf, it reminds me of what a different era we live in now.

What a great Picture of Alioto’s Restaurant, circa 1949!

Looking toward Pier 45 where the SS Jeremiah O’Brien Liberty Ship and the USS Pampanito submarine, both World War Two survivors, are docked, circa 1950: A little fishermen’s chapel has replaced the older building in the center of the vintage picture.

Looking toward Russian from the boat lagoon circa 1950: All of the buildings on Russian Hill in the vintage photo can be seen in the modern one:

Looking across a parking lot toward Russian Hill in 1952: The Standard Station on the northeast corner of Jefferson and Taylor Street, designed like a ship, was there from the 1930’s to the 1970’s, although, by the 70’s it had been remodeled. Two buildings built since 1952 make an exact line up impossible now, but the gas station was just in front of where the ships wheel Fisherman’s Wharf sign is now. The Sabella/La Torre Restaurant is on the right in both photos.

Looking northeast from Taylor Street in August of 1959 toward the Franciscan Restaurant: Those are the masts of the sailing ship Balclutha that was docked at Pier 43 back then.

Another view of Fishermen’s Grotto Restaurant, (Yes, they spell if different from Fisherman’s Wharf) in July of 1960.

Taylor and Jefferson Streets looking north in August of 1964:

Looking toward Russian Hill on the opposite corner of Jefferson and Taylor in 1965: I was able to find a table for lunch at the Jack in the Box restaurant, about where the Alpine looking building was in the vintage shot. Sometimes a Breakfast Jack and a couple of tacos are all you need to get through the day.

Looking back along Taylor Street toward the eastern wing of Pier 45, circa 1965:

‘Down Periscope’, starring Kelsey Grammer and Lauren Holly, was filmed in 1995 and released in 1996. It’s a silly thing about a World War Two era submarine involved in war games with the modern 1990’s United States Navy, but it’s fun to watch, and it was filmed in part at Fort Mason and on board the submarine the USS Pampanito, now at Fisherman’s Wharf.

The crew, along with Lauren Holly, line up alongside the Pampanito for inspection:

“Is that regulation cleavage, sailor?”

That’s the Pampanito’s aft deck gun behind her. (IMDb)

“Fifteen Men and Lauren Holly’s chest; Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum.”

That’s the top of the conning tower, but my view’s from the opposite side (musings.elisair.com)

There she is; sleek and fast, built to kill, a real beauty forward and aft.  Hey, I’m talking about the Pampanito! (musings.elisair.com)

The submarine was towed over to Fort Mason for the closing scenes. (musings.elisair.com)

Regulation high heels and a salute: (musings.elisair.com)

I walked around Fort Mason early in the morning on July 4^th. It felt both spooky and sad. Being one of the largest embarkation centers for the Pacific Theater during World War Two, the amount of activity that took place here back then is hard to imagine, and many, many, people left from here and never returned. I was singing ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ to myself as I thought about that generation.

The top photo is a slide I took above Fort Mason around 1985. I remember that they had a World War Two exhibit in one of the pier buildings and it was filled with World War Two veterans talking about their experiences. Sadly, it’s not likely many of them are still around now.

Here’s the USS Pampanito all decked out for the 4^th of July. The film crew, in no way, showed any disrespect for the landmark, and took good care of her during filming. Pampanito took six war patrols during World War Two, sank at least as many ships, and was heavily damaged from depth charges on one of the patrols. Sadly, in one of the attacks Pampanito was involved in, the ship sunk was carrying Allied prisoners, unknown to the crew. Over 1100 POW’s died in the sinking. The torpedo was not fired from the Pampanito, however, but from a sister sub involved in the attack, the USS Sealion. Seventy three of the survivors were rescued from the sea by the Pampanito. Let’s take a tour, aft to forward, through the submarine.

You cross this passage and enter the sub through this hatch on the aft side.That’s the Jeremiah O’Brien Liberty Ship behind her.

The aft torpedo room:

The aft engine room:

The forward engine room:

That looks like Charles de Gaulle on the cover of that Time Magazine.

The Crew’s Mess:

This room with the eerie red light is the control room where all attacks were planned.

Looking up through the conning tower, that’s the periscope.

I would have been the first person heading here after a depth charge attack!

The forward torpedo room:

Those are the forward torpedo tubes. The left one has a torpedo in it.

You break to the surface here in the fore of the ship, and you don’t have to worry about enemy destroyers or airplanes watching for you like the incredibly brave and heroic men of the “Silent Service” did.

Celebrations, protests, problems and celebrity sightings around San Francisco; just like nowadays: Oh well, one thing is certain; on Wednesday, for one day, the left-right in the City will put aside their differences and celebrate just being free. Right?

It would be just as dangerous climbing up on a streetcar with its power lines today as it was in August of 1945 for these goofballs celebrating the end of World War Two on Market Street in front of the Golden Gate Theater.

Look at all those great and long gone shops on Market Street near 5^th Street in the 1950’s; Grayson’s, Zukor’s, the Diamond Palace, Mannings and Hales! (Pinterest)

Down among the soggy people! Most of the buildings on this block of on 1^st Street between Market and Mission streets, seen here during a flood in 1958, are gone now, but the building with the Examiner advertisement on it today is still there. That’s part of the old Trans Bay Bus Terminal in the background of the vintage picture. (SF Gate)

I imagine that brat who doesn’t want her picture taken up at the Coit Tower parking lot in the 1960’s had brats of her own who have grown up by now, and have had brats of their own.

That’s Anthony Quinn on Stockton Street near Geary, looking down toward O’Farrell in 1960. Obviously, this picture was taken during the filming of the movie ‘Portrait in Black’ where Anthony Quinn co-stars with Lana Turner. A key scene in the film was shot at the I. Magnin department store here, now part of Macy’s. Quinn would have been standing somewhere around here. (Hollywoodpaper2)

What a terrific picture from the Shorpy Archive of the western side of Union Square on Powell Street in the 1950’s! The Union Square Parking Garage was established as a go-to air raid shelter during the Cold War.

Climbing aboard a cable car on Powell Street in front of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in the 1950’s and in 2018:

The southeast corner of Grant Avenue and Union Street in North Beach during the 1960’s: This is where North Beach Pizza, that used to be on the corner across Grant Avenue, is today. I closed down a lot of Saturday nights in North Beach in the 80’s and 90’s gobbling up a North Beach Pizza. (Gene Wright)

A protest march on Market Street in 1966: Boy, I’d like to have seen ‘Weird, Wicked World’. Actually, my picture cuts a little farther across Market Street on the right than the vintage picture; there was some civic scenery on the far right that I didn’t want to cut out. (Shorpy Archive)

In February of this year, I posted some then and nows that I did on a collection of paintings by Dong Kingman, the highly acclaimed and honored Chinese American water color artist and designer who based a lot of his work in San Francisco. These are some more of his paintings from a book he co-authored with Herb Caen entitled, ‘San Francisco – City on Golden Hills’, published in 1967. Some of the paintings were on two pages which accounts for the line down the middle on a few. Kingman died in May of 2000.

California Street on the top of Nob Hill next to Huntington Park: On the right is Grace Cathedral. Work started on the church in 1928, but was not completed until 1964. When Kingman did his painting here the south tower of the church had not been completed yet.

One of Kingman’s oldest paintings, on Washington Street looking north along Grant Avenue in Chinatown, painted in 1938:

I think I like this painting best, the view from Telegraph Hill at Union Street and Calhoun Terrace:

The Greenwich Steps on Telegraph Hill: Not as well know as the Filbert Steps, they’re barely visible from the street today.

This is a strange place for an artist to paint a picture! It’s below where the Bay Bridge anchors into San Francisco near Rincon Hill. When we were teenagers, the old-timers in the area would tell us that if you unscrewed those bolts, the whole thing would come down! They thought we believed them. It’s not true, right?

It’s a whole different view today than when Dong Kingman painted his view from Twin Peaks.

And also a puzzle for me, at times, trying to follow the footsteps of the characters in this 1944 murder mystery that takes place in San Francisco during World War Two. Patrick Quentin, the author of the book, was actually two writers, Richard Wilson Webb, and Hugh Callingham Wheeler. The locations are well identified and easy to find, although the writers took a “literary license” in describing the lay of the land and the names of some of the San Francisco structures. Two of the locations, however, are described very accurately, if somewhat exaggerated, the Stockton Tunnel and the southwest area near San Francisco Zoo.

The mystery opens up on Market Street during the war. The main protagonists in the book, navy officer Peter Duluth and his wife Iris, are looking for a place to stay in crowded wartime San Francisco. The above photo, taken during the war about where the book opens on Market Street near 4th and Stockton Streets, fits the opening paragraph well. As I have in the past with their permission, I’ve used vintage pictures from the fantastic website of http://opensfhistory.org/ of the locations I’m posting about, some of them around the period that the novel was written.

{Sailors, thousands of them, crawled up and down Market Street like a plague of blue locusts. Doubtless they brought color and racy vigor and all the other things sailors are supposed to bring to a scene, but I hadn’t come to San Francisco to see sailors.” / “The sailors, jostling against Iris and me as we beat our way forward, were just another of the things like overcrowded hotels and non-existent taxis that were conspiring against our week-end.}

{We had reached the mouth of Stockton Street. I took her arm and guided her out of Market Street’s sailors into an almost equally dense mass of harassed shoppers.” / “As we started to climb Stockton, I sneezed. I had felt a cold coming on in the train.}

Here is where they turned into Stockton Street in a picture taken in 1947 and now. Although it does incline a little bit, it isn’t much of a hill to “climb”.

{Half way up the block we passed a sign proclaiming a Turkish bath. With wild hopefulness, my wife said: “You don’t supposed Turkish baths rent rooms to mixed couples – I mean, if you explain you’re married?”}

The top picture was taken in 1945, just around the time Peter and Iris passed by here. This is the first block of Stockton Street off of Market. The construction work is due to the Muni Metro extension to Chinatown being completed. Peter mentions the Stockton hill (!) again when he goes back to the Turkish bath later in the book to try to sweat out his cold, probably a good way to get pneumonia! As he leaves the hotel at Union Square that they eventually find, he tells the reader,

{I strode down the hill to the Turkish bath.}

On his way to the bathhouse where he will eventually have his navy uniform stolen to incriminate him in an upcoming murder, he gives a colorful description of San Francisco.

{There’s an elusive something about San Francisco that no other city has. Maybe it’s the flower stalls blossoming on every street corner. Maybe it’s the crazy gradients that make roller-coasters out of the streetcars. Or maybe it’s just the air. But people in San Francisco doing the most humdrum things look like people at the peak of some enthralling adventure.}

{The St. Francis Hotel and the St. Anton Hotel stared at each other across the formal flower beds of the park like two rival and opulently upholstered dowagers at a garden party. We tried the St. Francis first. It would have none of Iris’s charm or my blunt instrument. Traipsing across the little park, we pushed through the swing doors and stepped into the haughty vestibule of the St. Anton.}

The only hotel that could have possibly been the St. Anton Hotel would have been the old Hotel Plaza built around 1915 that stood on the northwest corner of Post and Stockton streets. The hotel was still there during World War Two but I don’t know if it had been renamed the St. Anton Hotel; I can’t find any hotel under that name researching San Francisco history. I’ll have to do some more checking. The above two comparisons are of the St. Francis Hotel looking across Union Square to where the Hotel Plaza was, and the Hotel Plaza looking back (sort of) at the St. Francis. Demolished now, the Plaza Hotel was behind the trees in the background on the north side of Union Square.

Shortly after checking in to the St. Anton, Iris and Peter receive a mysterious warning that Iris’s cousin, Eulalia Crawford who lives on California Street on Nob Hill, may be in danger. They leave the hotel to take a cable car to warn her and walk through the Stockton Tunnel. I’ve crossed through this tunnel heading in the direction they headed many times and I find the description entering and exiting the tunnel, (leaving out some of the slightly racists comments acceptable at the time) accurate; east does meet west if you’re heading in their direction, which was actually south to north.

{Since it was impossible to get a taxi, Iris and I decided to walk up Stockton and take the cable car over on California.” / “We passed through a long dark tunnel and as we emerged at the other end, we were in another city where unreadable hieroglyphics took the place of names on the stores and the faces around us had lost their Anglo-Saxon features}

The vintage photo is the south entrance to the Stockton Tunnel in 1950, six years after Iris and Peter crossed through here.

Iris and Peter came out of the Stockton Tunnel into Chinatown here at this end, seen here in the vintage photo from above the tunnel, circa 1950. Peter noticed too that It doesn’t quite look as exotic as the impression that Iris gets, but you do get a feeling of leaving one country behind for another when you walk through the tunnel in this direction.

{Iris, watching the Chinese men and women moving past, made a little crooning sound. Already, I could tell, she was in a world more exotic than this real Chinatown.}

In the next paragraph, they’re catching a cable car at Stockton and California Streets heading up Nob Hill to Eulalia’s apartment. They would have to have climbed up the steps at the north end of the Stockton Tunnel and doubled back a block to do that. Here the writers get really confusing! Iris and Peter catch a downhill heading cable car to go up Nob Hill, and the cable car goes up and down hills as it climbs Nob Hill!

{We waited on the precipitous corner of California Street. Soon a cable car bucketed down the hill and ground to a last-minute, breathless stop. We boarded it. Iris chose places in the open section under the shadow of the giant brake lever. We sat there on the absurd benches which faced out towards the sidewalk. That cross-town ride, lurching up hills and zooming down hills added a final touch of insanity to our mission. Iris, clinging to an iron pole like a pole on a merry-go-round, kept her own counsel. Once, as we wheezed up to the great bulk of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, she murmured, “The white rose and the red rose mean blood.}

That sounds like a prophecy to me! When they get to Eulalia’s, they find her brutally murdered with clues pointing to Peter as the killer. They decide not to notify the police, and try to find the killer themselves. How original! They take a cable car back to where they originally caught it. Another reason that I think Iris and Peter were staying where the old Hotel Plaza was Peter’s narration here.

{At last the cable car dumped us at Stockton. We could have waited for another car to take us the four blocks to the hotel, but we decided to walk.}

Four blocks south, California to Pine, Pine to Bush, Bush to Sutter, Sutter to Post would have put them exactly where the Hotel Plaza used to be. Also, if they would have waited for another cable car to take them those four blocks they would have waited until World War Three because no cable car line could have traveled that way. The vintage photo above is California Street at Stockton looking east in 1948.

A tip as to where he may find a clue concerning the murderer’s identity leads Peter on a late night visit to the San Francisco Zoo area and Wawona Street. Peter accepts a ride from an acquaintance that he doesn’t trust in preference of taking a streetcar. However, playing it safe, he has the man drop him off at Sunset Blvd. and Sloat and walks a number of blocks in the dark past the zoo. Peter gives an eerie description of walking through this area at night back then.

{I was scared of the trolley. After midnight trolleys are infrequent. They are always maddeningly slow, and Wawona Avenue (Peter refers to the steet as Wawona Avenue instead of Street in the book) huddled close to the Pacific on the fringes of the Fleishhacker Zoo, was maddeningly remote.” / “I headed down Sloat towards the sea. I had never been in this district by night. It was desolate beyond word. A few houses straggled on my right. On my left, the bleak edge of the Lake Merced Park stretched away into the darkness. As I hurried on the street curved into the park itself and there was nothing but the darkness and the gaunt skeletons of trees. From the Great Zoo ahead of me, the lonely yowling of wild beasts rose every now and then, intensifying the silence. I quickened my pace until I was out of the park again and turned right into Wawona Avenue itself.}

The David Rumsey Map Collection aerial photograph composition of San Francisco in 1938 shows that there were, indeed, very few houses along Sloat Blvd. from Sunset Blvd to the ocean around this time. The vintage photograph above, circa 1940, shows Sloat Blvd dropping down from Sunset Blvd. and approaching the Pacific Ocean past the zoo on the right. This was the route Peter made his lonely walk before turning toward Wawona Street, probably at 45^th Avenue.

Peter goes to house on the corner of Wawona and 45^th Avenue where a second murder occurs. This murder is even more horrible for Peter because he sees another woman being murdered as it unfolds and he tries desperately to prevent it. Peter narrates that the house was on the corner of Wowana Avenue but doesn’t identify the cross street. The Rumsey photograph map shows that Wawona Avenue only cut three blocks from the Great Highway past 47th to 45^th Avenue around this time. After witnessing the murder, Peter states that he walked several blocks toward the ocean to the trolley terminal for the Zoo which was at, and still is, 47^th and Wawona, that’s why I’m putting the murder at 45^th and Wawona.

{I walked the few desolate blocks to the zoo terminal of the trolley line.” / “An empty car was waiting at the end of the tracks, less than a hundred yards from the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean. I was the sole passenger at first, and by the time the car bolted forward I had only two sleepy sailors as traveling companions. At least my exit from Wawona Avenue had been inconspicuous.}

The top two then and nows are at the 47^th and Wawona streetcar terminal. The black and white photo from 1949 shows that it was the L line, as it still is today, that ran all the way out here. The color picture from 1970 of an L Line streetcar turning onto Wawona Avenue from 47th shows that the terminal wasn’t quite “less than a hundred yards from the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean” which is behind where the hill in the background is.

The denouement of the book takes place at a circus being held at a building called the Lawrence Stadium. The only building that this could possibly have been is the Civic Auditorium, now the Billy Graham Civic Auditorium, in the Civic Center. Iris and Peter have learned from clues and tips that the murderer might have something to do with the circus being performed there.

{The Lawrence Stadium was somewhere along Market Street. Iris and I walked down Fillmore.” / “We Reached Market. It was too early for the tidal wave of sailors, but the street was crowded enough.” / “Iris said: “We’d better take a trolley. Oh, there’s one now.” / “The Lawrence Stadium reared up on the other side of the street. It was one of those big random buildings that get put up in cities and then have to be used for something}

Well, that could describe the Civic Auditorium. Circuses were held inside the auditorium, and I learned from SFGate that on one occasion in 1972 two lions got out of their cages and roamed around the auditorium for around three hours before being captured!  The top photo is a 1919 parade by the Hospital Corps passing the Civic Auditorium along Polk Street. The current picture is of preparations being put in place along Polk Street for the 2018 Pride Parade. Well, I’ll leave the rest of the story to anyone interested in reading the book. If you enjoy mysteries set in San Francisco or just mysteries at all, it’s not a bad read. Peter and Iris Duluth are not unlike Nick and Nora Charles only a little naughtier, and it was fun following them around San Francisco.

These are some more updates of slide pictures that I took in the early to mid 1980’s. I went back to spots that I photographed long ago, and it felt like almost everything had changed except me!

Market Street at Powell in 1985: This was around the time they began running old-time street cars along Market Street, although, they weren’t as “old-time” back then as they are now!

The Embarcadero, looking south in 1983, next to Levi Plaza: The old Belt Line railroad tracks were still there and Levi Plaza had only opened up a year or two earlier.

The Embarcadero at Broadway looking north in 1983:

This was taken on Powell Street in front of the St. Francis Hotel in June of 1984, the day the cable cars returned to service after being closed for repairs for nearly two years.

Chinatown at Grant Avenue and California Street in 1983: I may have taken this one while passing by on a cable car, I don’t remember. Old St. Mary’s is hidden behind trees now that weren’t there when I took the first picture. I wonder who that was taking a picture of me while I was taking a picture of him!

The Parade of Ships during Fleet Week, 1983, taken from Chestnut Street: This was still during the Cold War, and there was a lot more of a military showing back then. I’m not sure which aircraft carrier that was, but it may have been the USS Abraham Lincoln. You can see the Balclutha sailing ship on the left when she was still docked at Pier 43.

Watching the Blue Angels from the Coit tower parking lot in 1983: Look at the kids climbing up on the Columbus Statue on the left. We used to do that too. I was watching the air show from the steps leading up to Coit Tower. Fleet Week had only been revived two years earlier; I wouldn’t even try going up there on Blue Angels day anymore!

Late afternoon from Telegraph Hill in 1983 and in 2018: It doesn’t feel like thirty five years ago to me. I think that usually means that you’re getting old!