San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now

They’ll be closing up the Hyde Street Pier this spring and removing the historic ships for a complete restoration of the pier. It’s projected that the Hyde Street Pier may be closed for as long as three years. I’m sure it needs it and it will be a labor of love, and unlike the Cliff House and Union Square, it probably won’t lose some of its charm after they reopen it. (Thumbnail images)

 

Hyde Street Pier during the 1960s: Nice shades! (Vintage Everyday)

 

Fog closes in on the Hyde Street Pier in a Peter Stratmoen picture from 1975.

Somebody got a little mixed up in this travel poster putting the Bay Bridge behind the Hyde Street Pier. (Pinterest)

  

A slide picture I took in 1985 before the sailing ship, the Balclutha, was moved to the Hyde Street Pier:

 

A slide picture I took at the foot of the Hyde Street Pier in 1985: I don’t know whose waif that was, but I vaguely remember that I thought it was pretty cool the way she was sitting up on that post just like Huckleberry Finn or something.

 

Another travel poster by a Picasso wannabe showing the Hyde Street Pier in the background:

 

An old snapshot photo I took around 1985 of Hyde Street from the top deck of the ferryboat Eureka, docked at the Hyde Street Pier:

 

 

 

 

North Point Street is another one of those San Francisco Streets that, like New Montgomery Street or Van Ness Avenue, people usually drop the road designation and just refer to it by its title, leaving out Street or Avenue. Golden Gate Avenue is an exception because it can get confused with several San Francisco landmarks, and Broadway is understandable because I don’t think it has a last name. North Point was the original name of a part of San Francisco that stuck out into the Bay before the area was filled in, and would more appropriately be named Northeast Point Street, but that could be confusing too. Although I use North Point often, I don’t usually pay much attention to it, but now that the Liberty Ship, the Jeremiah O’Brien, is berthed where North Point merges into the Embarcadero, I’ll be traveling on it more often. The street extends from the Embarcadero (Embarcadero doesn’t have a specification, either) all the way to the Palace of Fine Arts. It completely disappears from Van Ness to Laguna Street and from Fillmore Street to Scott Street and passes by one of San Francisco’s most famous landmarks, but I’ll only be traveling a small part of North Point in this post. (Thumbnail images)

North Point at Grant Avenue in 1906: North Point Wet Weather Facility obscures the view of Telegraph Hill from here now, but you can see Coit tower in my picture, that wasn’t there in 1906. (Vintage picture from opensfhistory,org)

  

The view south down Powell from North Point in an opensfhistory.org picture from 1940: The building on the left is gone, as is the matching foot bridge, but you can see the spires of Saints Peter and Paul Church in both photos.

  

As I was passing Stockton Street, before I got to Powell, the smell of something cooking down the street got my undivided attention. Like in those old cartoons when an aroma would cause a character to float through the air in a trance to the source of the cooking, I wandered down to the corner of Stockton and Beach Streets. There was a fellow there selling grilled hotdogs that were twice the size of the ones you buy in a package, along with grilled onions and peppers, on an oversized bun. Although my doctor might have scolded me, a SWAT Team couldn’t have kept me from buying one. As I waited for my hotdog, I thought of another time I’d been to this corner long ago, when I wasn’t by myself.

It crossed my mind the other day,

since you both grew up and moved away.

When I walk by places from the past,

that time goes by so very fast.

Although it’s over twenty years,

it doesn’t seem that long.

It crossed my mind the other day,

I still take you along.

 

North Point also gets a cameo in one of my favorite San Francisco film noir movies, ‘The Lineup’ from 1958. Here at North Point, looking south along Mason Street, police officers are alerted by radio that a serial killer, played by Eli Wallach, has been spotted near the Cliff House. The police car makes a sharp U turn at North Point, and heads back along Mason Street to the site of the alert, which in reality is all the way over on the other side of San Francisco. Don’t worry, they get him. You can see the top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel in the far background on the left in both pictures.

The south east corner of Ghirardelli Square at North Point and Larkin Street during the 1920s: The entire south side of Ghirardelli Square borders North Point.

   

There are also beautiful vistas from North Point, like this view of Alcatraz and the Hyde Street Pier from Larkin Street at North Point during the 1980s, and a picture that I took in 2021. (Vintage picture from SF Gate)

 

In a 1972 episode of the television show ‘The Streets of San Francisco’ an armed security guard is shot to death during an armed robbery at Ghirardelli Square, and police officers Lt. Mike Stone (Karl Malden) and Inspector Steve Keller (Michael Douglas) respond the shooting. They enter Ghirardelli Square from the North Point entrance near Polk Street. A building has been put in since 1972 behind where the blue Volkswagen bus was. Also, if I had a dollar for every episode of ‘The Streets of San Francisco’ that had a scene that was filmed at Ghirardelli Square during the five year run of the show, that would buy a lot of Ghirardelli Chocolate.

Actually, nowadays, looking for fun on New Year’s Eve usually means finding a warm bar with a football game showing on TV, but I headed over there last night anyway, pretending I was young again. (Thumbnail images)

  

This picture on Market Street near Stockton Street is actually labeled ‘Market Street on New Year’s Eve’. It doesn’t give a date, but it was probably during the 1940s. It didn’t look like a very exciting New Year’s Eve that night. The State Theater, just visible on the left, was demolished in 1961. The California Theater Building, on the southeast corner of 4^th and Market Street where the State Theater was located in was demolished in 1968. The building with the Ross Store in the current picture is now on the corner. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

  

Jones Street in 1954, and the last run of the Jones Street Cable Car Line; that’s why there’s black ribbon on the cable car. Going into this area at night is a great way to find some excitement….. if you’re Indiana Jones! All of the tidying up during the APEC Summit has been discontinued, and the unfriendly street people who gather here have reclaimed their territory. (opensfhistory.org)

  

Market Street at Jones in 1975: Hmm, ‘WOMEN INTO DISCIPLINE’; that probably was a little more action than I was looking for Sunday night. This is the building where the Pussycat and Centre Theaters were located in. (opensfhistory.org)

  

A girls marching band, crossing Hyde Street from the Orpheum Theater: That wouldn’t have been quite the New Year’s Eve entertainment that I was searching for either; especially since their ectoplasm seems to be wearing off and they’re fading away. ‘The Mummy’s Hand’ dates the picture to 1940. (opensfhistory.org)

  

City Hall; now there’s a place to see a little action! Or maybe, that’s a place to see little action. The vintage picture, taken from about where I was at, is from 1925. (opensfhistory.org)

 

This 1966 picture, taken from close to where I’m at, but further out on Market Street and with a telescopic lens, is a great picture of this portion of Market Street when it was known as San Francisco’s ‘Great White Way’, mimicking New York’s Broadway. This would have been THE place to send New Year’s Eve in San Francisco long ago. (opensfhistory.org)

   

Well, there’s always fun on a cable car. Sometimes, you have to wrestle with these things to get a reasonable match up. (opensfhistory.org)

Elvis isn’t the only one having a ‘Blue Christmas’. This year, after four years, they’re having the Winter Walk again where they block off several streets near Union Square to traffic, and create a carpeted pedestrian area for shoppers and kids. It’s always been green in the past but this year it’s blue. (Thumbnail images)

Looking north on Stockton Street from Geary: Maiden Lane is the alley on the right.

Stockton Street near O’Farrell: It’s nice to see the Macy’s clock is still there.

 

Looking down Stockton Street from Maiden Lane to Geary and the old I Magnin Building.

 

Even Maiden Lane gets the blues this Christmas. These two pictures were taken where the long gone Stockton Street entrance to the Union Square Garage used to be.

Rock Hudson helps to turn the cable car around at the Market and Powell turnaround in 1959. I’m old enough to remember when you could climb on the cable cars while they were turning around. If you even touch one on the turntable today, you’ll get yelled at. (opensfhistory.org)

  

Lana Turner, wearing a coat she’d probably be arrested for nowadays, going into the I Magnin Department Store, now Louis Vuitton, in the 1960 film ‘Portrait in Black’. The last thing Lana would want to see is the police car in my picture; she’s going into Magnin’s to establish an alibi while Anthony Quinn kills her husband. Poor Lana, you’d think she would know that these things don’t work after ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’.

  

Anthony Quinn on Stockton Street near Geary, looking down toward O’Farrell Street in what looks like a news promotion for the movie ‘Portrait in Black’. (Hollywoodpaper2)

 

Cary Grant moves through what was supposed to be a war time crowded Fairmont Hotel Lobby in the 1957 film ‘Kiss Them for Me’. It wasn’t that crowded when I was there.

  

President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Post Street, west of Powell, in 1958: (opensfhistory.org)

  

‘Mr. San Francisco’ Herb Caen on a cable car at Powell and Market in a Fred Lyon photo from 1953:

 

Speaking of a police presence in Union Square, Lt. Mike Stone (Karl Malden) and Inspector Steve Keller (Mike Douglas) looking for the bad guys in a 1972 episode of ‘The Streets of San Francisco’. Smash and grabbers beware! You can see the old City of Paris Department Store where the Neiman Marcus is today behind Mike Douglas.

In December of 2020, I posted an article featuring a few pictures from Vintage Everyday and a link to an interesting film clip from vimeo.com featuring portions of a ride along the Powell Street cable car line during the 1970s. Downtown San Francisco was still lonely and quiet when I did my post due to the outbreak of the Covid19 Pandemic earlier that year in March, and the cable car system had been shut down for nine months. I bought some batteries in a Walgreen’s on Powell Street, showed some vintage pictures that I was going to update with current photos to a sales person named Jenny, and dedicated the post to her. I made a pledge to myself that when the cable cars were running again I’d redo the pictures I took that day, but that was still nine more months away. The cable car system was up and running again in August of 2021, and I forgot about my post. This month, I viewed my post again, and realized that I may have taken pictures while riding, waiting for, or just watching pass by, cable cars since service was resumed in the summer of 2021. They’re not perfect match ups, but they were taken at the same spots as my lonely looking pictures from 2020. The photos are, kind of, keeping my pledge. I’ll include a link to my December, 2020 post at the end of this post, and the vimeo.com film is still able to be viewed. (Thumbnail images)

  

Waiting for a cable to turn around at the Powell and Market Streets turnaround on an evening this week. It was a pretty quiet night, so I didn’t have to wait in line long to catch a car going up Nob Hill.

However, this picture, taken the Saturday after last month’s Black Friday, was a different story; we waited about forty five minutes to board a car that evening. The Burger King is where the Powell Theater behind the cable car was in the 70s photo.

 

Cable cars are once again rattling past the building where Omar Khayyam’s world famous restaurant used to be. This one is the only update that was an intentional redo. I took it just today to close out the set.

 

After the cable car reaches Powell and Sutter, the Vimeo film changes to the Taylor and Bay Streets turnaround. In July of this year, one of my visiting relatives from Texas took a picture of us boarding a cable car at this turnaround.

  

This last September, I took a picture that matches up pretty well of the cable car in the film heading back down Nob Hill along Powell Street on the return trip.

  

I had the same view on a cable car at Powell and Post approaching Union Square last September that the 1970s photographer had. Below is the link to my December, 2020 post.

Someday I’ll redo these (For Jenny)

I’ve been enjoying taking panorama pictures on my iPhone lately, but they’ve all been horizontally panoramic Last Saturday in Union Square, a girl I know showed me how to take panoramic pictures on an iPhone vertical as well as horizontal. Duh, me, for not knowing! They have a tendency to distort sometimes, as horizontal panoramic photos can do, but moving objects aren’t usually a problem, unless it would be birds. (Thumbnail images)

 

The Union Square Christmas tree during the 1990s: (Ray Morse / Emperornortontrust.org)

A cable car on California Street chugs past Grant Avenue heading up Nob Hill: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

An old postcard of the Tribune Building in Oakland: (bookmarksnc.org)

 

Broadway at 12^th Street in Oakland, from an old postcard: I worked in that building on the right for years when it was a Bank of America. No, it wasn’t a crooked bank. The tower had been added to the building long before I got there.

 

Whoa, I just barely got the Shell Oil Building on Bush Street in on that picture! I think my iPhone pulled a muscle stretching for that one. (ebay.com)

Wow, cool, the Star of Bethlehem visits San Francisco! Or maybe that was the moon. Actually, this was at the Fairmont Hotel Rooftop Garden last Saturday evening; a peaceful oasis away from the holiday crowd. My panoramic picture was a lot wider, but I cut it up so it would fit better with this image from the National Catholic Reporter that I found later.

 

And I can’t leave the Ferry Building out. It’s great to see the landmark building again after being covered up for months and months for its building-botox procedure. (vintagecityprints.com

I went to the Union Square area yesterday to see how the turnout would be for “Black Friday”. Also, I wanted to update some of the pictures I took around the area in 2020 during the Covid-19 Pandemic when most of the city was shutdown. Some of my older pictures were taken on Black Friday, 2020, which, like most of San Francisco, was still depressingly quiet. I guess somebody forgot to tell San Francisco, yesterday, that it’s a stagnant, unfriendly, dangerous city that nobody wants to visit anymore; the weather was perfect, and the crowds were back. I remember telling myself early on in the 2020 lockdown, when San Francisco was quiet, empty and lonely, that I wouldn’t mind the crowds in the city again, and I don’t. (Thumbnail images)

 

The cable car turnaround at Market and Powell Streets in April of 2020 and yesterday:

 

The top photo was at the cable car turnaround on Black Friday, 2020, Cable cars were not back running yet, but they had a festively decorate one on display for picture taking.

 

People heading up to Union Square on at Powell and O’Farrell Streets yesterday, and nobody heading up to Union Square on Black Friday, 2020:

  

Stockton Street at O’Farrell: The kittens and puppies in the Macy’s window display on the left were back yesterday.

 

Union Square: You don’t get a chance to see it this empty often.

  

Four masked people at Neiman Marcus near Stockton and Geary Streets: That was about as big as the crowd got on Black Friday, 2020. Still some masks now.

  

Another shot of Union Square, sans visitors. Work on the Central Subway Station entrance on the corner, which opened in November of 2022, was also temporarily halted.

  

Not as crowded around Westfield Centre now that it’s closing, but better than 2020.

  

The southwest corner of Union Square at Powell and Geary Streets:

I went back over to Chinatown Wednesday night. With the APEC Summit opening this weekend in San Francisco, Chinatown may be pretty crowded during this coming week, so I wanted to enjoy the calm before the crowds. The Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit is being compared by some as the biggest international event in San Francisco since the June of 1945 UNCIO San Francisco Conference toward the end of World War ll which led to the creation of the United Nations, so the City will be doing its best to accommodate visitors and show the world that San Francisco is still “the city that knows how’.  Yes, there was once a time when you’d have to be a soldier of fortune to walk around Chinatown at night, but it’s not as notorious as it used to be, and the alleys are peaceful and picturesque. I took some night time pictures and later found some vintage pictures taken during the daytime that closely match the pictures I took. (Thumbnail images)

 

‘Sneakin’ Sister Sally Through the Alley’: Spofford Alley at twilight. (Jimmie-Shein)

Ross Alley, once famous for Tong wars, opium dens and Shanghaiing: People now visit the alley to buy fortune cookies. (Arnold Genthe)

  

There’s a great chase scene throughout Chinatown from the 1949 film ‘Impact’. Here, Ella Raines chases the cab car Anna May Wong is riding in south on Grant Avenue from Washington Street, back when traffic went the opposite direction.

  

The once notorious Beckett Alley in Chinatown: In 1913 this street had 29 brothels on both sides of the street according to the National Trust Guide to San Francisco. The old photo was taken in 1878, when it was called Bartlett Alley. (opensfhistory.org)

 

Grant Avenue, looking south from Jackson Street in a 1960s: (opensfhistory.org)

Waverly Place, the widest and most popular alley in Chinatown, in a 1950s picture: (opensfhistory.org)

 

Another peaceful evening spot is St. Mary’s Square, across from Old St. Mary’s Church. I hope the two people in the 1958 photo are still together in the next life. (opensfhistory.org)

  

I headed home through a lonely and empty Maiden Lane. Once the most popular alley in the city,  this used to be where San Francisco traditionally opened spring every year. Now, like Lotta’s Fountain, people walk past it without a second thought. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

 

But the main reason I went over there was to visit the site of the old Trafalgar Building on California Street, up from Grant Avenue, seen in the opening of Bob Hope’s 1947 film ‘My Favorite Brunette’. The movie costars Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney Jr. with cameos from Alan Ladd and Bing Crosby, and it’s one of Bob Hope’s best movies. The scenes from a flashback near the film’s opening show people walking up California Street past the Trafalgar Building. The building was demolished and is now where the parking garage of the Ritz Carlton is. Below is a link do a post I did about the film in 2017. (YouTube)

‘My Favorite Brunette’ revisited

The weekend before Halloween, I went to the City at evening time to enjoy the Halloween weather (whatever that is) around town, and to practice taking panoramic pictures with my phone. I wandered around Nob Hill for awhile, waiting for the vampires to come out, (occasionally, people dress up like vampires during Halloween season, and do a ‘Vampire Prowl’ around Nob Hill) and then I headed down into Chinatown. These are a collection of nighttime pictures around San Francisco that I did update comparison pictures of the last week of October and the first week of November.(Thumbnail images)

 

Grant Avenue, looking toward California Street and the Sing Fat Building: This is as close of a comparison as I could get to the old 1930s postcard. (foundimage.com)

 

I was practicing taking panoramic pictures with my iPhone last Saturday night of a cable car crossing Grant Avenue on its way up California Street, so this isn’t exactly a perfect match up with the old 1960s picture at the same location. (hippostcard.com)

  

Powell Street at Market, it  looks like the 1950s: This might have been a good comparison picture if the old bank building at number one Powell Street wasn’t covered up with a tarp, because I’m standing in about the same spot as the 1950s photo. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

   

They are getting ready to fix up Union Square for Christmas when I went back last evening to finish up my set of nighttime pictures. I didn’t get too bad of a line up with this old postcard of Union Square at night in 1912. The building on the right in the postcard was remodeled into the IMagnin Building in the 1940s, the buildings along Stockton Street, to the left of the Dewey Monument, are all still there. (UC Berkeley Library Archives)

 

Market Street, between 6th and 7th Streets: The Katharine Hepburn movie, ‘Summertime’ playing at the United Artists Theater on the right dates the vintage picture from during 1955. With reckless abandon, I headed into the area at night to get an updated picture. What a great Saturday spot this used to be; movie theaters all along Market Street and classy department stores like Weinstein’s; a far cry from what this area is like now. (San Francisco Chronicle)

  

A picture I took in January of this year, when City Hall was lit up for the 49ers who were in the Playoffs, matches up pretty good to this picture of City Hall in October of 1966. (San Francisco Public Library archives.