San Francisco Before the Quake

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake was one of my many teenaged obsessions. (Here's an earlier post partially about it.) The other day I came across a film showing what San Francisco looked like a year before the quake.

The first third or so is shot from the front of a streetcar as it makes its way down Market Street to the Ferry Building. It's a wonderful view of what it was like to be there, and a hair-raisingly absurd encounter with cars, horses, and pedestrians. Watch out!

Later parts show the city after the quake, and in later decades.



All of this is possible through Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco.

Via kottke.org