San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now

This post is about construction work in progress around Market Street in the past. Hold on….. I’m working on getting the job done, but the post is under construction, and it might not turn out to be all that it was built up to be. Groan! Actually, the post might not be too thrilling to some of my readers, (“Construction work!”) but to me, it was a challenge. This was one of the most difficult posts I’ve ever worked on! Lining these pictures up was a problem for various reasons; the same spots for some were difficult to pin down, a number of them were shot from out in the street, which can be dangerous to try to duplicate, the lighting wasn’t always good, and one of them I had to go back and redo because I was in the wrong spot. I’ll post them in the order I took them, from Spear Street to Van Ness Avenue. (Thumbnail images)

  

The Hyatt Regency on Market and Drumm Streets, going up in the early 1970s: (San Francisco Digital Library)

  

This was the one I had to redo. It’s on Market Street, east of 2^nd Street in 1968. My first take was west of 2^nd. Like many of the vintage pictures in this set, it was taken during the construction of BART. The Ferry Building, Southern Pacific Building and what you can see of the PG&E Building in the far right background line up pretty good. You can make out part of the blue-green curtained Crown Zellerbach Building in the center. Most of the buildings on the left are still there, but can’t be seen behind the trees in my photo. The vintage picture is from the San Francisco Digital Library collection of James A. Martin photos from his great sfmemory.org site.

  

Looking toward Market Street and the Hobart Building from 2^nd Street in 1970: (San Francisco Digital Library)

    

Looking south down 2^nd Street from Market Street in 1970: One block down, you can see several of the buildings on the corner of Mission Street and 2^nd that are still there. The Clock Tower Building at Bryant and 2^nd Streets is in the far background of both photos. (San Francisco Digital Library)

  

Looking east from New Montgomery in March of 1970. The Hobart Building across Market Street is on the left. (San Francisco Digital Library, James A Martin)

  

Looking across Market Street toward the Palace Hotel in 1913: I don’t know what was going on then, but it wasn’t BART construction. (opensfhistory.org)

  

Looking west along Market Street near Grant Avenue in 1973: (San Francisco Digital Library)

  

Looking north along Powell Street from Market Street in March of 1968: The Flood Building is on the right, across from Number 1 Powell Street, and the Sir Francis Drake (Beacon Grand) Hotel is in the far background of both pictures. (San Francisco Digital Library, James A Martin)

  

Market Street at 8^th Street in October of 1967: (San Francisco Digital Library, James A Martin)

  

Market Street at Van Ness Avenue in May of 1971: I wish I would have gotten better lighting for this one. From 1968 until 1961 the Carousel Ballroom was named Fillmore West, with some great rock and roll venues from concert promoter, Bill Graham. You can see Twin Peaks in the far right background of both photos. (opensfhistory.org)

 

Some I won’t, and some I can’t. (Thumbnail images)

  

I took this picture in December of 2015 of Market Street at Drumm. The older picture is from a now defunct Facebook page called Vintage Facebook. I got just about every mode of transportation traveling on Market Street in my photo; Waymo wasn’t available yet. The 50 on the Ferry Building was celebrating the upcoming Super Bowl in February of 2016 at Levi’s Stadium. The 60^th Super Bowl will be back at Levi’s Stadium in February of 2026.

  

I knew that I couldn’t safely get a good line up picture of Dustin Hoffman diving across the Bay Bridge in the ‘Graduate’ if I was driving, so I asked my kid to ride along and take the shot when I said “Now”. I got into the same lane as in the movie, and at the right spot when I called it, he got it perfectly.

  

I got about as good of a comparison of this 1960s picture of California Street climbing Nob Hill where “little cable cars climb halfway to the stars” as I’m ever going to get.

  

This tinted 1851 daguerreotype was taken toward the Bay from where the Hills Brothers Coffee Building is now. I wondered whose silhouette is in the old picture; something I will never know. Nor will ever be known whose silhouette is in my photo. I didn’t set that up; she just walked by in the shadows when I snapped my picture. I enjoy little breaks like that.

   

I can still dodge traffic and run across the Great Highway at Point Lobos Avenue to get another update here, but it won’t read ‘Cliff House’ anymore.

(Addendum, 11/12/2025: The owners of the copyright to the Cliff House name, Mr. and Mrs. Hountalas, have donated the Cliff House name to the Western Neighborhoods Project, and the name will be restored to the building. I may do an update of this one after all.)

  

I had to climb down a gully at Dolores Park to get this update, and also, had to be very careful and alert so that I didn’t become a MUNI J Line streetcar casualty.

  

The spot in the end zone where Dwight Clark made “The Catch” thrown by Joe Montana on January 10, 1982 at Candlestick Park. The play put the 49ers in the Super Bowl and started a football dynasty. My picture was during a tour in 2014 of the stadium shortly before they demolished it. Both Dwight and Candlestick Park are gone now.

  

Since I took this update in 2018 of the old Hap Jones Motorcycle Shop on Valencia Street in 2018, they’ve demolished the structure and put up another very boring looking building.

  

I’ve never been able to get a good line up with vintage pictures of the northwest view from the Top of the Mark at “Weeper’s corner”. Recently, I found a picture in my computer that I took of some friends up there in 2015. I compared it up with some of the vintage pictures I had of the view, and it matches up about as good as I’m ever going to get.

   

A few years back, a friend of mine named Nora asked me if I could help locate where this picture of her mom and dad in San Francisco in the 1940s had been taken. She remembered her mother telling her the photo was taken in San Francisco, but not where. Nora sent me the picture and we were able to identify where they were walking. Based on the Union Furniture Building and Weinstein’s Department Store across Market Street, and the shape movie theater marquee behind them, they were walking past the Warfield Movie Theater at 982 Market Street. Nora and I did some more detective work recently, and the movie showing at the Warfield was ‘The Kid From Brooklyn’, starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo, which premiered at the theater on July 24^th 1946, dating the year of Nora’s picture for us. No need to do this one again.

  

I would probably redo this photo of my 17 year old mom, on the left, with her cousin, Frances, sitting on the old Sloat Blvd entrance to Fleishhacker Zoo, every time I have visiting relatives. However, they closed and fenced off that old entrance in 2012.

Me and ‘Danny’ out at Ocean Beach near the end of his run. I’d redo this one tomorrow, if I could.

I took a walk east along Market Street from 9^th Street to 4^th Street to photograph the locations of the movie theater palaces that lined both sides of this portion of Market Street from the beginning of the 20^th Century until most of them were closed and demolished by the 1970s. It’s fascinating to think what this area must have been like, especially on Saturday afternoons during that period. This stretch of Market Street is boring at best now, and often uncomfortable to walk along, but here long ago with its fashionable department stores, clean sidewalks, and a host of movies to select from, was the area for the residents, not the tourists (Thumbnail images)

  

I started at 1350 Market Street, and where the Fox Theater, probably the most beloved San Francisco movie theater, used to be. Demolished in 1963, it’s where the Fox Plaza is now. (Vintage picture from the SF Chronicle)

  

Mentioned in the Gelett Burgess poem, ‘The Ballad of the Hyde Street Grip’ and destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, the rebuilt Orpheum Theater at 1192 Market Street is still around and has a performing arts only venue now. (blogspot.com)

  

In spite of efforts in the 1990s to keep it around, the Embassy Theater at 1125 Market Street was demolished in 1994. (SF Gate)

 

Across from Jones Street, the United Artists Theater at 1077 Market Street, originally the Market Street Cinema, was demolished in 2016. The Centre Theater next to the United Artists Theater at 1073 Market Street survived as a film theater until 1987. The third theater seen here in the group was the Guild Theater at 1071 Market Street. Like the Centre Theater, it closed in 1987 and is currently vacant. The small building the Guild was in is to the right of the streetcar in my photo. The Centre was in the building with the fire escape next to it. (Reddit)

  

Another masterpiece, the Paramount Theater at 1066 Market Street, closed in 1965 and was demolished that year. (opensfhistory.org, outsidelands.org)

  

Once owned by Howard Hughes and with live appearances from notable stars like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, the Golden Gate Theater at 1 Taylor Street is stage only venue now too. (blogspot.com)

  

The building that the Warfield Theater was in at 982 Market Street has survived and the Warfield now has a music only venue. (blogspot.com)

   

Both the Esquire Theater at 936 Market Street and the Telenews Theater at 930 Market Street closed in the late 1960s and were demolished in 1972 to create Hallidie Plaza. You can see the #1 Powell Street Building in the background of both pictures. (sanfranciscostory.com)

   

The little State Theater at 787 Market Street, at 4^th and Market Streets, was as far east along Market Street that the theaters got, I think. It closed in 1954, and was demolished in 1961. (SF Chronicle)

I put on my Giants Jersey that a friend gave me over 15 years ago, and went out to Oracle park yesterday during the Giants game. I didn’t get a ticket to go in the park, I just took some pictures in the area, and enjoyed the atmosphere, although it was a disappointing season. (Thumbnail images)

  

This is the portion of San Francisco I took my pictures at, from part of the 1938 David Rumsey aerial composition and Google Maps.

  

The lines to get in at Willie Mays Plaza and the Bay entrances were both long, and I thought the lines in Disneyland were bad!

  

Fans who pay the ridiculous parking fees enter the ballpark crossing over the Lefty O’Doul Bridge, which has changed quite a bit since the 1931 picture was taken. (San Francisco Library Digital Library Archives)

  

A 1922 photo at the southwest corner of 4^th Street and Welsh Street, probably named after a distant relative of mine. No, not 4^th Street! (opensfhistory.org)

  

De Boom Alley, on the right, in 1919 and today: De Boom runs from the northeast to the southwest pertion here at 2^nd Street. So….. you guessed it, this is lower De Boom. (opensfhistory.org)

  

3^rd and King Streets in 1941, looking toward the old Spanish Mission looking Southern Pacific Train Station, from what is now Willie Mays Plaza at Oracle Park: They should have figured out a way to save that building. (UC Berkeley Library Archives)

  

There’s an interesting story behind these pictures. Japan Street ran from Brannan to King Street. The vintage picture was taken just after the Pearl Harbor attack when Japanese sentiment in San Francisco wasn’t running very high. The street is now named Colin P. Kelly Jr. Street. Colin Kelly was a B17 pilot shot down by Japanese planes in the Philippines on December 10, 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor. (San Francisco Library Digital Library Archives)

 

This is a reverse then and now. I took the bottom picture last May during a game I went to at Oracle Park. It’s looking up 2^nd Street to Downtown San Francisco. The vintage picture is looking back down 2^nd Street from Market Street in 1905 toward where the baseball park is now. (San Francisco Library Digital Library Archives)

  

Looking north along 3^rd Street from King Street in 1939. The Gallenkamp’s Building is still around. The dudes in the old photo all look like they’re heading to Oracle Stadium. (San Francisco Library Digital Library Archives)

   

Now, I know that this slang for San Francisco is offensive to some people; Herb Caen wrote a book in the 1950’s titled ‘Don’t Call It Frisco’, and recently, I watched a 1968 episode of ‘ I Spy’ called ‘Tag, You’re it’ where Bill Cosby refers to San Francisco as “Frisco” and when his Secret Service boss says “What?” Cosby politely changes it to “San Francisco”. However, Herb Caen mellowed later in life, and admitted that it wasn’t a bad expression, and it’s better than what some people call San Francisco now. At any rate, it’s in the title of the publication I’m posting about today that was printed five months after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire as a testament to the steel construction in buildings that survived the disaster. Yesterday, I visited some of the “splendid survivors” pictured in the book. Some of the old photos aren’t the clearest, and it’s impossible to get a perfect line up with some of the vintage pictures, but they can still be seen. The vintage pictures are from the UC Berkeley  Library Archives (Thumbnail images)

I started at the Flood Building at Market and Powell Streets; I understand that it’s still owned by the Family that had it built. I’ll include the descriptions of the buildings from the book.

I headed down Market Street to Grant Avenue and doubled back along Geary Street to where the steel frame of the Whittell Building is, the only thing on the building completed when the earthquake struck. The Whittell Building is behind the Britex Fabrics sign in my picture.

I headed back along Geary to Kearny Street and another one of my favorites, the Gothic Mutual Savings Building. The east side of the building is covered up now by an addition, which was probably very practical, but destroyed the aesthetics of the structure. The old Chronicle Building is on the right in both photos.

I looped around the Palace Hotel to New Montgomery, and headed to Mission and 2^nd Streets. The old Wells Fargo Building on the northeast corner of the intersection survived, was rebuilt and extended.

 

My next destination was at Montgomery and California Streets. If I was Carl Nolte, I would have walked to California and Montgomery, but although I’m younger than he is, I have half the energy he does. I headed back to Mission and 3^rd Streets, and caught the Muni #8, heading north along Kearny Street, to the Kohl Building on the northeast corner of the intersection. This was the best shot I could get of this wonderful relic.

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about the imminent demise of the Vaillancourt Fountain. The fountain doesn’t look like it’s going to “go gently into that good night” with the sculptor fighting it each step of the way. He may or may not be successful, but nothing’s going to save Alioto’s Restaurant. It will be demolished soon, and last week’s SF Chronicle has a artist’s rendition of what the spot may look like soon. I’ll have a harder time letting go of Alioto’s than the Vaillancourt Fountain. This little stretch of Taylor Street, north of Jefferson, has always been one of my favorite spots in San Francisco going all the way back to it being one of the area’s of San Francisco used in the the Disneyland Circlevision attraction ‘America the Beautiful’ in Tomorrowland. I looked back over my blog to some of the times I visited Alioto’s Restaurant in a post. (Thumbnail images)

  

The bottom photo is a view of the Fisherman’s Wharf Lagoon from my table upstairs on a birthday lunch in 2016. The top photo is a vintage picture from SF Gate, looking back toward where I was sitting before Alioto’s was remodeled.

  

A cartoon view of Aliotos’s from the children’s classic ‘This is San Francisco’ by Miroslav Sasek:

  

Steve Keller (Michael Douglas) 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” in an episode of ‘The Streets of San Francisco’ TV show. 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.

  

This little stretch of outdoor seafood shops in front of Alioto’s from the 1930’s was from a vintage picture on the wall of the stairs leading up to Alioto’s Restaurant.

  

Another undated vintage picture on the wall of Alioto’s looking back across Fisherman’s Wharf Lagoon.

  

A twilight picture looking back toward Pier 43 from upstairs Alioto’s: The vintage picture is a 1975 photo by Peter Stratmoen

  

A 1938 shot of where Alioto’s would eventually evolve from in a photo from the UC Berkeley Library Archives: Alioto’s was closed by September of 2023 when Applebee’s Restaurant kindly let me get a comparison picture from their window.

  

However, my all-time favorite picture of Alioto’s Restaurant will always be at twilight from an old 1950s souvenir book.

Different styles, different crowds, different prices, same place: At least, the same place for me because I usually head to the same attractions that I’ve been enjoying since I was a kid. I was nominated by family back east coming out to Disneyland to go down there again for the Labor Day Holiday. It didn’t take much urging, I still love that place, crowds and all. I found a collection of color photographs on the internet taken at Disneyland in 1958. Though they weren’t always the best quality, I decided later that they’d be interesting to do modern updates of. I went back to the internet to find the website and give them the credit for the vintage pictures I downloaded, but I haven’t been able to find it again. They may have all been taken by the same photographer, I’ll update the due honors of the photos source as soon as I find the site again. (Thumbnail images)

  

Sleeping Beauty Castle; probably older than most of the buildings in Downtown San Francisco now, but not showing her age.

  

When you enter the park today you still have two tunnels under the Wald Disney Railroad track to take, left or right. There are more trees in Disneyland today than 1958, and this one at the right tunnel was probably transplanted, if it’s real. Right, Tony?

  

A big difference “where the rubber meets the road” in the Tomorrowland Autopia since 1958.

  

The entrance to Adventureland: I’ve seen older pictures of the park when the crowds were modest, but !this might be the only picture of Disneyland I’ve seen with nobody in it! Oh, wait, there was one person. That must have been a lonely day for him!

    

No lines and much lower prices for fast food back then. What is that, a spy on the right?

  

Fast food diners in 1958 and 2025: That lady with the sunglasses in the vintage picture looks so bored. That’s not allowed in Disneyland!

  

Not sure if the Dumbo’s get as high off the ground in Fantasyland today. They didn’t while I was watching.

There have been a lot of remodeling changes in Fantasyland, like here at Peter Pan’s Flight.

  

Main Street Square and the Train Station: I imagine that’s the same car; I mean, you don’t see a lot of them around.

 

The Tom Sawyer Island dock for the rafts, with Fort Wilderness in the background: The original Fort Wilderness was demolished in 2007 and a smaller one was rebuilt, but is closed to the public now.

  

The Pontoon and Suspension Bridges on Tom Sawyer Island: Not as novel today, I guess.

  

Fishing on a dock at Tom Sawyer Island, with the Mark Twain Riverboat in the background. They actually stocked this portion of the Rivers of America with catfish, bluegill, and trout, and visitors could fish of the Huckleberry Finn Fishing Pier with make-shift fishing poles and worms. The attraction lasted from 1956 to 1965.

I used that expression a few posts back. The first time, and probably the only time I’ve heard that used, is the bus scene in the film ‘It Happened One Night’ when the travelers are singing the song ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’. It’s more like Edward Lear “nonsense”,  and I love that movie….. Now, where was I going with this? Oh, yeah; “Alas, alack and Alaska”, the San Francisco Chronicle announced that San Francisco officials have formerly requested the removal of the 1971 structure, the Vaillancourt Fountain. Actually, although I didn’t mind it, I won’t necessarily be sorry to see it go. It resembled the entrails of a giant concrete monster, but it kind of looked pretty when they changed the colors of the water flowing from it. I looked back over my blog to see how many times I posted pictures of the fountain. (Thumbnail images)

  

The 1971 ceremony at the opening of the fountain: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

In case you’ve ever wondered what the back of the Vaillancourt Fountain looks like, and who hasn’t. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

1970s and 2023 people in front of the fountain:

  

1970s and 2017 kids playing at the Vaillancourt Fountain:

  

“The Streets of San Francisco, the television show that dares to use the Vaillancourt Fountain for a backdrop.” That might have been a good promo for this episode of the TV show.

  

And as an added bonus, you get a view from the top of Vaillancourt Fountain in the ‘The Streets of San Francisco’ episode. Hmm, now that I think about it, I’m going to miss that ugly thing.

Last weekend and this weekend, I spent some time around the Ferry Building, updating some old pictures from a book I bought at the San Francisco Railway Museum called ‘Tours of Discovery’ by Anthony Perles. It was twenty bucks, but well worth it; most of the vintage pictures in this post are from the book. If you haven’t visited the Railway Museum, you should; it’s a little treasure, sure to satisfy anyone interested in the Muni, Market Street Railway, Cable Car systems. (Thumbnail images)

  

This overhead photo from David Rumsey’s 1938 overhead composition of the portion of San Francisco in front of the Ferry Building where the streetcar and eventual bus “loop” was. The first block of buildings just below the loop were demolished in the late 1950s or early 1960s. To the north of the loop, you can see the pedestrian bridge that crossed over the Embarcadero to where the Embarcadero Plaza is now. Crossing underneath the loop, from the north and south, is the automobile underpass that used to be there.

  

The pedestrian bridge at the northern end of the loop during the 1930s: This picture is from Nancy Olmsteds’s book ‘The Ferry Building: Witness to a Century of Change’.

  

A streetcar approaches the loop from the north during the 1940s: On the right is Pier One, on the left is the two way automobile underpass. I stopped in at the Joyride Pizza in Pier One for a couple slices of pizza. (Tours of Discovery)

  

The Market Street approach to the loop when busses were using it during the 1950s, although this one is heading south on the Embarcadero: I’m pretty close to where the vintage photo was taken and the fire hydrant in my photo may be at the same spot as the old picture. Pier One is on the right in the vintage picture; you can just see a portion of the top of it through trees on the right in my picture. The sign in the upper left of the vintage picture is from the Ensign Cafe in the first building on Market Street of the block of buildings I mentioned earlier that were demolished. (Tours of Discovery)

  

The Ensign Cafe appears in a lot of the pictures of this area from the 1950s, and can be seen in the 1957 film ‘Pal Joey’ in a comparison picture I did years ago.

  

A streetcar approaches the loop from the south, past the old Ferry Post Office/Agricultural Building: That’s some interesting parking on the left in the old photo. It was a cloudy day yesterday, and you can just see the Agricultural Building through the trees in the photo I took from the F Line handicap platform. (Tours of Discovery)

  

Another cloudy day update of streetcars chasing each other through the loop during the 1940s: You can see the old YMCA Building on the right in both photos. (Tours of Discovery)

  

This is a cool picture of a streetcar and a bus entering the loop from Market Street during the 1950s. The first building in the background is where the Embarcadero Plaza is now. The three buildings to the left of it is now the Hyatt Regency. (Tours of Discovery)

  

I’ll close with a photo of the loop from the Market Street Railway in an update I did in 2019.

Saturday was a nice day to redo some of my 1980s slide pictures I’ve posted in the past. As I’ve mentioned in a few past posts, slide photography was very popular in the 1980s, although you had to have some type of projector to view your developed pictures. Also another plus, although I couldn’t have known it back then, slide pictures convert to CDs with much better clarity than prints. It was a picture perfect summer Saturday with events going on all over the City. These are a few redos of slide pictures I took in 1983, 1984, and 1985. (Thumbnail images)

  

Market Street at Powell around 1984. They were just beginning to start running the old streetcars along Market Street at the time. It wasn’t a bad line up, considering that I was catching the tail end of the Pistahan Parade.

  

Two ladies taking a smoke break in 1983, with Union square in the background. They may have been workers from I Magnin. This was as close of a comparison to the spot as I could get Saturday.

  

Another person enjoying a smoke and coffee break at the corner of Powell and Geary Streets in 1983. You can see the construction work on the Powell Street Cable Car Line that shut down the entire cable car system in October of 1982.

  

Powell Street in June of 1984, and the return of the cable cars after all of the lines had been shut down for 20 months.

  

Market Street at Kearny, looking east toward the Ferry Building: I think you can see Lotta’s Fountain on the left in the 1985 slide before it was remodeled back to its original size. You can just see a part of the fountain in my update.

  

The Ferry Building and the notorious Embarcadero Freeway in 1983. That street off of Steuart Street is now called Don Chee Way.

   

Steuart and Mission Streets: The historic Audiffred Building was reconstructed in 1983-1984, but I’m not sure if my slide was taken before the work was finished. You can see both the Bay Bridge and the Embarcadero Freeway in the background of the slide.