So, I had a thirteen year relative from Texas who’s never seen San Francisco before out for a visit last weekend. He wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, names that are folklore to him. Alcatraz is booked for months in advance, and the idea of visiting the Golden Gate Bridge by land on a summer weekend is a joke! I did the next best thing; I took them on a Red and White Fleet tour boat ‘Bridge to Bridge’ cruise. Most of the photos from the cruise are more of a now and then collection because I took the pictures first and searched for vintage pictures that make a close comparison afterward.
We sailed out from Fisherman’s Wharf. Among the things you can see in the top photo are the Bay Bridge, Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower, and the World War Two Liberty Ship the Jeremiah O’Brien. The bottom photo is Russian Hill and Hyde Street. The brick building at the bottom of Russian Hill is the old Del Monte Cannery. We’re going to visit there later in this post.
Approaching the Golden Gate Bridge on a Red and White tour in 1968 and on a Red and White tour last weekend: (opensfhistory.org)
The tour sails under the Golden Gate Bridge circles back and heads for Alcatraz Island. The top picture was taken in 1952. There were still a lot of tough prisoners on the “Rock” then. The penitentiary is at the top of the hill. (opensfhistory.org)
The top picture was taken in 1937. Al Capone was still out there then. In May of 1946, prisoners rioted and took over Alcatraz in a bloody two day battle. Check out the You Tube link below for a newsreel of the story. (opensfhistory.org)
The tour continued to the Bay Bridge, seen in the top photo from the 1960s, and cruised along the shoreline back to Fisherman’s Wharf. (vintagestockphotos.com)
Before we left, we stopped at the Visitors Center in the old Del Monte Cannery. I have been by here dozens of times and I’ve never stopped in to the Visitors Center. It’s fantastic; just loaded with vintage San Francisco waterfront history. The picture on the left is looking up Hyde Street from Jefferson Street in a slide picture I took in 1985. The Cannery is on the left.
The Visitors Center winds through a large portion of the Cannery with very interesting films and displays to view, much of which used to be housed at the Maritime Museum down the street.
I wonder whose baggage they were.
The last “Dirty Harry” movie, ‘Dead Pool’ made in 1988, had an assassination attempt on Inspector Harry Callahan scene filmed here. Callahan, (Clint Eastwood) steps into the glass elevator with actress Patricia Clarkson. Harry has rubbed the mob the wrong way and they’re out to get him.
Two bad guys fire hundreds of rounds from automatic weapons as the elevator descends.
They do a lot of damage to the elevator, but don’t kill Harry or the girl. Personally, I wouldn’t trust hit men who can fire guns for three minutes through glass at helpless targets and miss!
It didn’t do them any good. Harry comes out shooting and dispatches them.
All they did was mess up his tie.
The glass elevator in the Cannery is gone now. The elevator shaft where Harry and his friend almost got “the shaft” is in the background.
I started out where I entered the city yesterday, at the BART escalator near the Hyatt Regency, seen here in 1976. It looks pretty busy that day and I’ll bet that most of those BART passengers, if not all of them, paid for their tickets! (hiveminer.com)
Where the California Street cable car line comes into Market Street in 1960: (hiveminer.com)
Market Street at New Montgomery Street next to the Palace Hotel in 1966: (hiveminer.com)
This one confused me at first. It was taken at Market Street and 3rd Street, looking toward Kearny, in 1978. At the left is the doorway to the old Mutual Savings Bank Building, at the right is Lotta’s Fountain, but where is the old Chronicle Building, one of the oldest buildings in Downtown San Francisco? I did some checking; in 1962, they covered the Chronicle Building behind a steel façade to modernize it so it would fit in better with the skyscraper boom beginning in Downtown San Francisco around then. And how dumb was that! The Chronicle Building was the American Savings Building in the 1978 picture. (Flickr)
Now, I’m at the Flood Building on the corner of Powell and Market Streets. It looks like they were doing a little road work here in 1948. (hiveminer.com)
Right here is the Powell Street cable car turnaround, seen here in 1949: (hiveminer.com)
They were working across Market Street from Powell in 1948 as well, at the long gone Hale Brothers Department Store next to the Emporium. (hiveminer.com)
I turned around at 7th and Market Streets at the Odd Fellows Building. From here on, Market Street is more of a “no man’s land” until you get to Van Ness. Anyway, it seemed to me that this ten block walk was a lot easier when I was sixteen! The vintage picture was taken in 1984, around the time they came up with the idea of running vintage streetcars along Market Street. This developed into today’s Muni F and E Lines. (Dave Glass)
I first became interested in this portion of Vallejo Street in the mid 1980s after watching a movie called ‘Hell on Frisco Bay’, made in 1955 and starring Alan Ladd and Edward G. Robinson. (IMDb)
The east view along Vallejo Street on the steps between Montgomery and Kearny Streets from a slide picture I took in 1985 and now: The view from here is spectacular! The pier at the end of Vallejo Street is Pier 9.
Another slide picture I took on the Vallejo Steps just above Montgomery Street in 1985. If it wasn’t for the cars you could hardly tell the difference.
In a 1957 episode entitled ‘The Witness’ from the television show ‘Harbor Command’ Inspector Ralph Baxter tracks down a witness to a murder who’s hiding in a house on the Vallejo Steps. He goes down the steps to the house where the man is hiding to convince him to turn himself in.
Baxter goes down the steps to the house with the dark painted door on the left. The house has been remodeled and the door is painted white today.
Inspector Baxter notices a suspicious man in the doorway of a house across the street from the where the witness is hiding. Sure enough, the man turns out to be one of the gang trying to locate the witness to kill him. The bottom picture is the doorway where the bad guy was watching from.
The opposite side of the Vallejo steps from where Baxter walked down seen in the episode.
Vallejo Street between Montgomery and Sansome Streets in a slide I took from 1985. Trees block some of the view today. A house has been built now in the empty lot to the left of the van in the 1985 picture.
In a ‘Harbor Command’ episode from 1957 entitled ‘Gold Smugglers’ two dental assistants have been forging the dentist’s name to order gold that they’ve been stockpiling. They murder the doctor when he finds out what they’ve been doing. They attempt to smuggle the gold out of San Francisco. Naturally, Inspector Ralph Baxter will spoil their plans before they get too far. Here, they try to make their escape in a taxi on the Embarcadero at the foot of Vallejo Street. You can see construction work on the soon to be finished Embarcadero Freeway in the right background of the show scenes.
Now, back to Alan Ladd: In ‘Hell on Frisco Bay’, Ladd plays an ex police officer wrongly convicted of manslaughter who’s just been released from prison. He comes back from San Francisco to try to find out who framed him. Sometime around 1985 I recorded the film on a VHS video recorder, and was interested in the location of this scene. Ladd is shadowing a mob moll to locate a witness to the murder he was framed for. The movie is finally available on DVD, and I watched it again last night, probably the first time since 1985, to get my captures.
Although the location wasn’t identified in the Alan Ladd and Eddie G. movie, it was easy from the scene to track it down to Vallejo Street and Hodges Alley, between Montgomery and Sansome Streets, where I took the 1985 slide in the top picture.
Jones Street looking down toward Union Street and beyond to the Bay: (flickr)
Jefferson and Taylor at Fisherman’s Wharf: (flickr)
The cable car turnaround at Powell and Market Streets looking in the opposite direction from where most pictures are taken at this location: Eddy Street where the building with the ‘Christopher for Lieutenant Governor’ sign is used to cut through to Market Street before it was cut off in the early 1970’s by Hallidie Plaza and the Powell Street BART Station. George Christopher, who was Mayor of San Francisco in 1962, lost his bid for lieutenant Governor in that election. (Chronicle)
Looking across Market Street to the cable car turnaround on Powell Street: (opensfhistory.org)
Grant Avenue and California Street in Chinatown on a sunny day in 1962, and a foggy day in 2019: (Gayraj.com)
City Hall honors the San Francisco Giants 1962 Pennant win, and the 2013 Oracle Team, USA 2013 America’s Cup yacht racing victory. (Vintage image source unknown)
Cindy’s crazy about Disneyland too. These are pictures from Disneyland taken in 1962. The Monorail passing the Disneyland entrance: That looks like the Disneyland Hotel being constructed in the far back of the vintage picture. (Blogspot.com)
Dumbo the Flying Elephant Ride and the Chicken of the Sea Pirate Ship in Fantasyland with the Matterhorn in the background: This was as close as I could come to this spot now. (flickr)
The Haunted Mansion: The unfinished Haunted Mansion sat on a hill between Frontierland and the Indian Village from 1962 until it opened in August of 1969, with different reasons for the delayed opening including the death of Walt Disney in 1966. (Disney Parks Blog)
The Submarine Lagoon and Monorail Station with the old Skyway in Tomorrowland: (dailymail.co.uk)
Market and First Streets looking toward the Ferry Building in 1985: The novel concept of running old streetcars along Market Street was just getting started then, and it developed into today’s wonderful F and E Line of vintage streetcars.
Pier 26, directly under the Bay Bridge, on an overcast day in 1983, and an overcast May 25th, 2019. Those are the old Belt Line Railway tracks, no longer in use back then, on the right in my old picture.
The Embarcadero, south of the Ferry Building, with the infamous Embarcadero Freeway in 1983: The freeway was demolished in 1991. There was a Giants baseball game at Giants Stadium today, (I’m calling it that, see?) so fans were heading to the game near here in my current picture, something that would have been a concept out of science fiction in 1983.. The game turned out to be as gloomy for the Giants as the weather was in my old shot.
Steuart Street and Don Chee Way south of Market Street and another look at the Embarcadero Freeway in 1984: The building on the right where the Muni Museum is now wasn’t built in 1984.
I think this one turned out the best, and I got a break when the sun came out for a bit. This is looking down California Street from Stockton. My original picture was taken in 1983. There were no cable cars running in San Francisco at that time. The system had shut down in 1982 for repairs and wouldn’t reopen until June of 1984. It’s hard to imagine two years without cable cars nowadays! (It was hard to imagine then too) You can see the work being done on the cable line down at the bottom of California Street in my 80’s picture.
I also made it back down to Disneyland for my annual “Memorial Day or close to it” tradition this week. Here is a slide from 1983 at the entrance to Adventureland. Either people have stopped having babies, or they don’t rent strollers in Disneyland anymore.
Looking back in the opposite direction from the previous picture near the entrance to Adventureland in 1987: That’s my sister and her four kids: The one on my lap didn’t stop making faces before the camera until she got into her thirties, or something like that. Hmm, I didn’t remember that I used to part my hair.
It’s a whole different Tomorrowland with different looking Monorail Trains today than our 1987 trip here to Disneyland. That’s my little brother Pat on the right. We lost Pat in 1995, and I never can recapture all of the fun I had in Disneyland that I had when he was along.
The old and beautiful streetcars that rumbled their way through town like this one at Stockton and Vallejo Streets in 1916. All four buildings on each corner of this intersection in 1916 are still there. (Vintage picture, Charles Smallwood)
The little Alpine houses for privileged army families under the Golden Gate Bridge: (James Fitzpatrick’s ‘Cavalcade of San Francisco’)
The old 1939 Transbay Terminal on Mission Street: And what did San Francisco get to replace it, a beautiful new Transbay Terminal that’s been closed for almost eight months as of this writing because of engineering blunders. There are a lot of theories about why that happened, but none them make any sense to me. (SFMTA)
15 cents cable car rides: Powell Street at California in the 1960s: I hope she got everything she has on there! They don’t let passengers climb on the back of the car here anymore. (Fred Lyon)
Pier 7 at the foot of Broadway: Demolished by the 1980s, it’s now a walking pier. (Opensfhistory.org)
In the 2014 version of the movie ‘Godzilla’, the monster leaves San Francisco past Pier 7 after destroying most of the city.
That combination of fog, cars, and the Embarcadero that made San Francisco a perfect setting for a film noir movie: (Fred Lyon)
The small snack bar in Dolores Park where Roman Rodriguez strangled Hilda Pagan in 1952: In the vintage photo from Hannah Clayborn’s ‘Historic Photos of San Francisco Crime’ police question Rodriguez at the spot of the murder. When I took my picture several years ago the building where Rodriguez and Pagan met was still there, although a top portion had been added.
In 2015, the building where Hilde Pagan was murdered was demolished during the Dolores Park renovations.
Barnaby Conrad on the left and Herb Caen bowling with booze bottles on the sidewalk in front of El Matador in the late 1950s: (Maxminimus.blogspot.com)
I made some telephone calls and learned from one of my “ears” around the City that the girl had been seen recently up on Nob Hill. I took a few slugs of rye from the office bottle, put my hat somewhere on my head, (I got that line from Raymond Chandler) and headed up California Street. (Vintage photo, Fred M. Springer Collection, 1959)
Ah, mysterious Nob Hill. There’s a femme fatale for sure in front of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. I wondered if she knew anything about the girl. I showed her the picture, but all she kept saying was, “Buy me a drink, handsome?”
I realized I was being followed and ducked behind a car on Mason Street. (John Gutmann, kadist.org)
I spent the afternoon searching for her. There are a lot of girls on Nob Hill and I followed up on many possibilities, but all I got were a lot of nasty stares. (Fred Lyon and the Shorpy Archives)
I knew I was still being followed; you can’t fool an old trooper like me who has had bill collectors following me around most of my life. I decided to resume my search after dark. (Fred Lyon)
The problem with searching for the girl at night was that I’m nearsighted, so even if I would have bumped into her accidentally, I probably wouldn’t have recognized her. (Fred Lyon)
I started out the next day. I felt that I was being followed again, and looked over toward the Pacific Union Club. Some old detective was shadowing me; his polite smile didn’t fool me. He looked too old for this racket! (Shorpy Archives)
I had learned that morning from another one of my tipsters that the daughter may have been seen going into Huntington Hotel. When I got there Harbor Command had arrived before me. They must have been searching for the girl too.
Ralph Baxter set up a stake-out in front of the hotel.
My old snooper was still following me. He’s so indiscreet!
But Harbor Command wasn’t interested in the girl. They were tailing two thugs who left the hotel and climbed aboard a California Street cable car. When the cable car left, Harbor Command followed it.
I headed over to Grace Cathedral, one place I hadn’t checked yet. When I got there Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) was waiting for me.
But Chalmers was right, I “blew it”. It turned out that my tipster was wrong. It wasn’t Nob Hill she was seen at, but Telegraph Hill. It was an easy mistake to make; they both end with ‘Hill’. I never did find her. I gave ten dollars of the two C’s back to my client and spent the rest of it up at the “Weeper’s Corner” at the Top of the Mark, looking down at the Huntington Hotel and wondering who the girl was.
I started at the Franciscan Restaurant at the Wharf and headed south by southeast. No, not ‘North by Northwest’. The Franciscan has been remodeled since the 1960 picture, but it still has that odd shape.
Pier 43 in 1960: Pier 43 has been removed now, but the frame entrance is still there. The old Balclutha sailing ship, seen in the vintage photo, used to be docked there before moving over to the Hyde Street Pier. He’s thinking, “Hey, don’t look at me! I didn’t poop all over this fence!”
Whoa! Opensfhistory says that these cars were hit by a Belt Line train near Mason and Jefferson Streets during the 1960s. Let’s hope they were parked and empty at the time. That’s the old Fisherman’s Wharf Travel Lodge in the background of both pictures. The Boudin Bakery and Restaurant is here today where the crash was.
Here’s a Belt Line Engine running along the Embarcadero past Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower across from Pier 29 in 1957.
Filbert Street heading toward Telegraph Hill circa 1950: The portion of the hill past the boxcar in the old picture is where the wooden Filbert Steps of Telegraph Hill are. A bandaged Humphrey Bogart climbed the Filbert Steps three years earlier in the film ‘Dark Passage’. Levi Plaza is on the waterfront side of Filbert Street today.
An organized labor demonstration by dock workers at Pier 15 in 1937: This was organized three years after the 1934 waterfront strike where police fired on Longshoremen.
A fuzzy but likable picture of Pier 9 taken in 1966:
Broadway at the Embarcadero in 1965: This was a far north as the Embarcadero Freeway, built in 1957, reached.
Almost underneath the Embarcadero Freeway way at Pier 1 in 1960: Did I tell you that I was one of the last people to drive on the Embarcadero Freeway on the day of the Loma Prieta Earthquake, October 17th, 1989, before it closed forever? “Yes, Tim, many times.” We’re getting close to the Ferry Building.
Stopped to rest at the Ferry Building before heading back. A ferryboat chugs over to the Bay Bridge and the Oakland Mole in 1952: By that time the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges were making ferryboat travel across the Bay obsolete. By the 1960s the ferryboats were gone. The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake that shut down the Bay Bridge for one month jumpstarted new ferry boat Service across the Bay to the Ferry Building. One of the new ferryboats, sleeker and more environmental friendly, is heading toward today’s Ferry Building boat dock in my picture.
The television show ‘Harbor Command’, starring Wendell Cory as Captain Ralph Baxter, ran from the fall of 1957 until the summer of 1958. Most of the episodes were filmed around the Embarcadero, but in the episode ‘Lovers’ Lane Bandits’ the Harbor Command takes a trip to the Richmond District. A teenage girl, who attends George Washington High School in the Richmond District, sneaks out of the house after she’s been grounded to meet her boyfriend at a “lovers’ lane’ near the Pesidio. She witnesses a murder there, and, unfortunately for her, one of the killers has seen her, although she doesn’t know that. Captain Baxter learns about the girl through detective work and is desperately trying to find her before the killers do.
Baxter goes to the old Playland-at-the-Beach amusement park to talk to her father who works there. Baxter and his partner park at the Cabrillo streetcar turnaround near the Funhouse. The bottom picture is where they entered Playland from the Great Highway today.
Baxter questions a fellow who works at the Funhouse to find out where the girl’s father is. This scene has an extremely rare shot of Laffing Sal in action at the Playland Funhouse. Behind them is the Playland Merry-go-round. The merry-go-round is still in operation today at the Yerba Buena Center.
This is about the spot where the Funhouse once was.
Baxter learns from her father that she’s meeting a friend at a drug store at Balboa Street and 42nd Avenue. Here, the two girls leave the drugstore heading west toward the beach. This is the northeast corner where the girls were walking today. I couldn’t get the same line up on the corner because of parked cars.
The killers stalk behind them in a truck.
When we next see the two girls they’re at the corner of Balboa and 37th, five blocks east in the opposite direction from where they were heading the last time we saw them. The girl with the light hair has a real problem; she’s witnessed a murder and she knows she should tell someone, but her dad had grounded her and when he finds out she sneaked out she’s sure he’ll just kill her! Hey, honey, turn around! Your dad probably won’t kill you, but the two guys in the truck behind you will!
When her friend goes into the market on the corner one of the killers grabs her. Oh, oh, this doesn’t look good! Somebody had better learn to obey her dad in the future.
Her friend comes out of the store to find that she’s disappeared. This was at the northwest corner of Balboa Street and 37th Avenue.
But this teenager has a guardian angel, Ralph Baxter, approaching the corner where she was taken north from 37th Avenue.
Her worried friend tells Baxter the direction they went.
The bad guys turn north off Balboa onto 40th Avenue.
Harbor Command misses the turn at 40th and in a action reminiscent to the chase scene in ‘Bullitt’ burn up rubber backing up to 40th Avenue.
They head up 40th to Geary Blvd.
On Point Lobos Road the Harbor Command police cut the truck off right about here, just down from the Cliff House.
As Baxter and his partner approach the truck, they threaten to shoot the girl if the officers don’t back away.
When the teenager faints, (well, I probably would have too) Baxter gets a clear line of fire and shoots the man with the gun. That’s Sutro Heights behind him. He pulls the driver out of the truck, and case closed. The two videos below are the Funhouse scene from the show, and Laffing Sal today in Pier 45 at Fisherman’s Wharf. They say it’s the same one; judge for yourself.
We’ll start at the foot of Market Street looking west. The crowned Call Bulletin Newspaper Building, the tallest building in San Francisco at the time, can be seen in the far background on the left in the vintage picture. That was the ruins of an interesting looking building where the Hyatt Regency is today on the right.
We’re further up Market Street now at Montgomery Street. There are three survivors today from the vintage picture; the Call Building on the left, remodeled now and called the Central Tower, the gothic looking Mutual Savings Bank Building directly across from the Call Building, and the reddish-brown Chronicle Building, taller now that it was back then. (blogspot.com)
New Montgomery and Mission Streets, looking north toward Market Street showing the ruins of the Palace Hotel and the rebuilt Palace Hotel there today. The building in the background is the one on the right in the previous vintage picture taken at Market and Montgomery Streets.
Army soldiers brought down from the Presidio marching past the Call Building on fire: Woe betides to any looters they may have come across; they shot them on the spot back then! (blogspot.com)
We’ve moved north to Pine Street looking east past Kearny Street. That’s the Bank of America Building on the left center in the current picture.
We’re up on the top of Nob Hill now. That’s the gutted James Flood mansion, the only mansion on Nob Hill to survive the earthquake and fire. I don’t mind a cable car photo bombing one of my pictures any time. The Flood mansion is now the exclusive Pacific Union Club.
Looking toward the south western corner of California and Powell Streets where Leland Stanford’s mansion stood. Farther up California Street are the ruins of Mark Hopkins home, now the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
Refugees heading east and west along Market Street near 3rd: The Ferry Building is in the background. It’s interesting how most of them are following traffic rules and staying on the right in both directions.
And, of course, most San Franciscans favorite survivor, the Ferry Building; roughed up, but she took it well. In spite of these monstrosities they’re putting up nowadays, like the Sales Force Tower, the Ferry Building is still the “Grande Dame” of San Francisco.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 