San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now

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.

 

I don’t often read Miss Manners, but this one in the entertainment section of the San Francisco Chronicle recently caught my eye. It started me wondering about whether any of my photos have involved intrusion or invasion of privacy, as I don’t always pay attention to the reaction of people in some of my shots. At other times, I ask people if they would mind posing in some of my pictures, which to my recollection, has never made anyone uncomfortable. However, looking back through some of my posts I do remember a few times when my camera may not have been welcome. Still, for the most part, I think my picture taking is tactful and not invasive. Here is the Miss Manners letter and reply, and a few of my then and nows in answer to Miss Manners and her Gentle Reader. (Thumbnail images)

On the Proprieties of Public Photography

{DEAR MISS MANNERS: As a frequent tourist, I take lots of photos wherever I go. I try not to be intrusive, but it isn’t feasible to ask permission of anonymous people in public spaces, and U.S. courts have ruled that nobody has a right to privacy in such settings. Everyone carries a phone these days, and the number of people taking photos has increased exponentially as a result. Candid photos are much more interesting than posed photos or photos without people. Social realism is a movement in art and photography. I think it’s important to capture the people and settings that reflect our times. I do not sell them, but I share the best ones with friends. I avoid taking photos of people who appear to be homeless or mentally ill, because it seems exploitative. Perhaps what was once considered rude has become acceptable and prevalent. Perhaps there is a distinction between candid photos in public versus private settings among family, friends and acquaintances. In the latter case, it seems appropriate to share these with the people photographed, offer them copies and destroy any they deem offensive or unflattering. In foreign countries, I’ve encountered people who took offense at public photos, but never in the U.S.

GENTLE READER: Indeed, everyone has a camera. If you are photographing the public activity of our time, you must have countless pictures of countless people taking countless pictures — mostly of themselves. Yet Miss Manners feels obliged to tell you that there are also many in the United States who dislike being photographed in public and private gatherings, but feel forced into it by photographers who are not as sensitive to their feelings as you seem to be. Often, they are reluctant to speak up, feeling that they are being constantly captured by security cameras anyway. Prevalent, yes; but not acceptable to all. It is a matter of respect, not of law.}

 

I don’t think these kids on Market Street were all that thrilled about me taking their picture, but I wanted people in the match up I was doing on the Fred Lyon picture, and they just happened to wander by.

  

I don’t remember this officer at the Golden Gate Park Police Stables being all that excited when I asked him if I could take his picture to match it up with the 1950s picture from Images of America, but he obliged.

This was too good of a match up of people on a bench in Golden Gate Park to miss the opportunity, and I don’t remember anybody in the modern photo getting mad at me. I didn’t worry about the feelings of the people in the older picture

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In my eagerness to get my picture, I may have missed a mugging going at Kezar Stadium. Hope not.

You’ll usually get a wave or a smile when you take a picture of people on a passing cable car.

  

I don’t remember much about this slide picture I took in 1985 at the foot of the Hyde Street Pier, but I do remember that I thought the kid looked pretty cool just sitting on the post watching the 1985 traffic, and it’s one of my favorite pictures.

  

Haight and Cole Street in 1967: Occasionally, I share what I’m doing with people who get in my picture, and maybe the girl in the crosswalk with blue-green hair would have been interested  if I had showed her the picture of Janis on the same corner when she past by, but I didn’t.

 

Sometimes, I’m not paying attention to the people in my line up, and then I notice things, like the pretty girl with a Victoria’s Secret bag crossing Ellis Street at Powell, when I look at my photo later. (Peter Stratmoen)

  

And then, there are people who don’t mind if I asked them if I can take their picture, like these three sets, and that makes me feel good. These two were kind enough to pose for me when I showed them the older photo of Fisherman’s Wharf Lagoon. The girl was named Joyce, but I couldn’t remember the fellow’s name. I hope they were able to see the post.

  

This fellow at Fisherman’s Wharf didn’t mind posing for me, (here he goes again with that corny line) he wasn’t crabby about it at all!

  

Tricia, a girl I met in the Haight on the day after Christmas in 2020, was kind enough to pose for me holding a photo taken at Haight and Ashbury Streets in 1967. She even showed me where Jimi Hendrix lived on Haight Street for awhile.

  

Still, there are some who are not that happy to see me, like this girl on Haight Street. She was a little concerned about why I was taking a picture of where she lives. When I went to show her the photo from Vintage Everyday I was updating, she just went back inside and closed the gate. Oh, well, maybe it was her mom in the vintage photo.

 

And sometimes, when you know you’re probably intruding, you just have to pretend that you’re taking a picture of something else, and look for a picture later on that closely matches yours. (opensfhistory.org)

I like this picture from the 1939 WPA Guide to San Francisco, and I wanted to see if I could find the same spot, which isn’t hard when you use Google Maps. It’s on Grant Avenue, looking south toward Washington Street.

  

Sacramento Street in 1948. It amazes me that this urban children’s playground, now named Willie “Woo Woo” Wong Playground has been around since 1927. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

Grant Avenue, next to Old St. Mary’s: I hope this Chinatown Cinderella got home before her 1956 Dodge turned back into a pumpkin. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

Waverly place, looking north toward Washington Street in 1965: This image is from the 1965 film ‘Once a Thief’. Amy, from the Sunnyside History Project website, enlightened me about this movie, which also features scenes from Fisherman’s Wharf, the Hyde Street Pier, and SOMA among other San Francisco locations.

  

Washington Street, west from Grant Avenue in 1973: Anybody who is familiar with San Francisco in the 1970s will remember the terrible thing that happened here in 1977 when gunmen stormed into the Golden Dragon Restaurant and shot five innocent people to death, wounding eleven others. I think I read somewhere that all of the murderers involved in this crime have been released from prison now. (opensfhistory.org)

  

Old Chinatown Lane, off of Washington Street in 1984. There was a tour guide taking people down this alley when I took my picture yesterday. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

I’m amazed looking over past posts I have done at how many times I have referred to the portion of Geary that runs from Market Street to Van Ness Avenue as Geary Blvd. when it’s actually Geary Street. Also, I wasn’t clear on which came first, Geary Blvd. or Geary St. However, this old 1932 map of San Francisco from wikimedia.org shows that it was originally called Geary Street all the way from Market Street to Sutro Heights. I’ve included the link. I’ll have to do some research to find out when the western portion of the street/boulevard was changed to Geary Boulevard….. Just did, AI says it was in the 1970s; I thought it was earlier. I took a walk along part of Geary Street yesterday to update some vintage pictures from the internet. (Thumbnail images)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/1932_Candrain_Map_of_San_Francisco%2C_California_-_Geographicus_-_SanFrancisco-candrian-1932.jpg

  

Geary Street at Market in 1945: Lotta’s Fountain was in a different spot then; it’s, reportedly, in it’s original spot now. By the way, Lotta’s Fountain’s 150^th birthday is being celebrated this year. An addition to the Gothic Mutual Savings Bank Building is where the ‘The Stag’, whatever that was, used to be.

  

Looking down Geary toward the Palace Hotel from Grant Avenue; I think the vintage photo is from 1910: The building on the right is still named the Magnin Building.

  

People in the crosswalk at Geary and Stockton Streets in 1957. Ticket that grid-locker! I wasn’t sure which Stockton, Geary crosswalk this was in the vintage picture from the San Francisco Library Archives, at first. It couldn’t have been looking toward Union Square, I Magnin, or the City of Paris Department Store, but the Savings building in the background looked out of place at this intersection. (See next photoset)

  

So, I looked around for any vintage picture that would verify if the vintage picture in the previous set was labeled correctly. My “go to group” from opensfhistory.org came through with this picture from 1965; the crosswalk in the previous photoset was definitely the one that ran from the City of Paris to the Guaranty Savings Building.

  

What a great vintage picture this is of a streetcar passing Powell Street from Geary, heading east, in 1942! The St. Francis Hotel is in the background. I couldn’t get a photo with a streetcar entering the intersection, but I’ll settle for a cable car. (San Francisco Library Archives)

  

Now, we come to my dedication. Dedicating a post to a ghost might seem macabre, but I always felt sorry for Florence Cushing, the young girl who jumped to her death from the top floor of the Union Square Plaza Hotel in 1911, then called the Paisley Hotel, and reportedly still haunts the building. “(She) can check out any time (she likes), but (she) can never leave.” Here’s one of the links with a part of her story. Also in the 1971 picture from the San Francisco Library Archives is the unfinished Westin Tower of the St. Francis Hotel.

https://thehauntghosttours.com/blog/union-square-hotel-haunted-sf/

     

Mason Street was as far as I got yesterday; I wanted to explore Geary Street all the way to Van Ness Avenue where the twain of east Geary Street meets west Geary Boulevard, but “alas, alack, and Alaska” I’ve had an arthritis flare-up in my toe all month that’s been cutting into my “pounding the pavement” time. This vintage picture is looking east along Geary Street in 1913. The peak of the tall Whittell/Grace Building in the left background is painted white now, so sometimes it appears invisible in some of my pictures. The Hotel Stewart on the right is now the Handlery Hotel. (UC Berkeley Library Archives)