1860s Archives - Page 13 of 23

Lost New England Goes West: Sacramento Street, San Francisco (2)

May 25, 2016May 23, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking down Sacramento Street from the corner of Powell Street in San Francisco, around 1866. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Lawrence & Houseworth Collection.

Sacramento Street in 2015:

The first photo here was taken just a half block further up the hill from where, 40 years later, Arnold Genthe would take his famous photograph of the earthquake. Much of this view had changed by 1906, but many of the buildings from this 1866 view were still standing up until the fires destroyed this entire scene. One of the few buildings that survives today from the 1866 photo – in fact, it may be the only one left – is the church on the right side. This is the Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral, which was built in 1854 and, although gutted by the fires in 1906, was repaired and is still standing at the corner of California and Grant Streets.

The view of the church from here is now blocked by modern buildings, and the city’s skyline has obviously changed considerably in the 150 years since the first photo was taken. In the distance down Sacramento Street is the Financial District with its skyscrapers, and at the very end of the street, barely visible, is the Ferry Building, which was built over 30 years after the first photo was taken,. It was one of the few historic buildings still standing in this scene, and also one of the few that survived both the earthquake and the fires.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Lost New England Goes West: Powell Street, San Francisco

May 22, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking north on Powell Street from the corner of California Street in San Francisco, around 1866. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Lawrence & Houseworth Collection.

Powell Street in 2015:

The image of a cable car descending a steep hill, with San Francisco and the bay visible in the distance, is what many people picture when they think of San Francisco, and although it wasn’t deliberate on my part, that is exactly what the present-day scene shows. However, the first photo shows a very different scene along Powell Street. At the time, San Francisco was still very much a “wild west” kind of city, and the Nob Hill area here had not yet developed into the wealthy neighborhood that it would soon become. The cable car system was also still several years away, so at the time the only way up the steep streets to Nob Hill was by horse or, as the young boys in the photo chose to do, by walking.

Any buildings from the first photo that would have still been standing 40 years later would have been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, when fires spread across this entire area. Aside from the nearby Flood Mansion, all of the Victorian-era mansions on Nob Hill burned down, and the only other surviving building in the area was the Fairmont Hotel, located just to the left of this scene. However, like the rest of the city, the neighborhood was rebuilt, and today it remains one of the city’s most expensive areas, thanks to its commanding views and proximity to the center of San Francisco.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Lost New England Goes West: View From Nob Hill, San Francisco

May 22, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Facing northeast from the corner of California and Powell Streets in San Francisco, around 1866. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Lawrence & Houseworth Collection.

The view in 2015:

Like the view in the previous post, these photos show San Francisco as it appeared in its early years. It had experienced rapid growth during the Gold Rush, and less than 20 years later in the 1860s it was becoming a major city and port on the west coast. The first photo shows the present-day Jackson Square, Portsmouth Square, and Financial District areas, with San Francisco Bay and Yerba Buena Island in the distance. There are a number of ships in the bay or at the wharves, which were likely arriving from or departing for ports around the world. At the time, the city was largely dependent on ships. The Transcontinental Railroad would not be completed for three more years, and the Panama Canal was still almost 50 years away, so the most economical trading route from San Francisco to New York and other east coast ports was the two month, 13,000 mile journey around the southern tip of South America.

Within a few years after the first photo was taken, San Francisco’s population reached 150,000, which was an astonishing 15,000% increase from just 20 years earlier. In the years that followed, the growth continued, and by the time the 1906 earthquake struck, the population was around 400,000. Many of the buildings in the first photo were likely still standing in 1906, but this entire area was destroyed by the fires that were started by the earthquake. At least one building in this view did survive, though. The Montgomery Block, visible just above and to the right of the center, was built in 1853 and stood at the corner of Montgomery and Washington Streets until 1959, when it was demolished and replaced with a parking lot.

Today, development in downtown San Francisco has completely blocked the view of the bay from here. The most prominent building in this view is the Transamerica Pyramid, which was completed in 1972 on the site of the Montgomery Block. It remains the city’s tallest building, and its pyramid shape is instantly recognizable in the San Francisco skyline.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Lost New England Goes West: View From Russian Hill, San Francisco

May 21, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The view looking east from the top of Russian Hill, looking down Vallejo Street and facing San Francisco Bay, around 1866. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Lawrence & Houseworth Collection.

The view in 2015:

It was hard to get to the exact location of the original image, because most of Russian Hill is now covered in buildings. However, this view from the top of Vallejo Street just east of Jones Street was pretty close. The first photo was taken in the early years of San Francisco’s history, when the city was in the midst of a rapid population boom. By the mid-1860s, the initial Gold Rush was over, but the city continued its dramatic growth, increasing from about a thousand in 1848 to nearly sixty thousand in 1860. By 1870, the population was nearly triple that, and the section of the North Beach neighborhood seen here was completely developed.

The three streets in this view are, from left to right, Green Street, Vallejo Street, and Broadway Street. At the time, the area to the right of Broadway Street was part of the city’s infamous “Barbary Coast” – a red light district that attracted miners and sailors with drinking, gambling, prostitution, and entertainment. This continued until 40 years after the first photo was taken, when the entire area was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and the fires that followed.

Today, the only identifiable building remaining from the first photo is the Saint Francis of Assisi Church, on the left side of Vallejo Street at the corner of Columbus Avenue. It was built in 1860, and although the fires in 1906 gutted the building, the brick walls and towers remained standing. The interior was rebuilt and rededicated in 1919, and today it is the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Remarkably, though, despite all of the changes to the neighborhood, the church still stands out as a major landmark. Unlike the nearby Financial District to the right, the development in this area is still largely two and three story buildings, so the view really doesn’t look dramatically different from 150 years ago. The one major change, of course, is the Bay Bridge in the distance, which was completed in 1936, connecting San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island on the left and Oakland on the other side of the bay.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

School Street, Boston

March 25, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking up School Street from Washington Street in Boston, around 1860. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

School Street in 2015:

School Street is only a couple hundred yards long, yet this narrow downtown street has been home to a number of historic sites. The entire street is part of the Freedom Trail, and notable sites along here include King’s Chapel at the Tremont Street end and the Old Corner Bookstore on the right, here at the Washington Street end. In between, opposite Province Street, were two generations of Boston City Hall buildings, built on the former site of the Boston Latin School. The street is named for this school, which was here from 1704 to 1748, and during that time educated future Founding Fathers such as Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine. Another School Street landmark, which has long since been demolished, was the original Parker House hotel, which was built in 1855 and is barely visible in the distance on the left side, on the site of the present Omni Parker House. A couple notable guests who visited the hotel not long after the first photo was taken included John Wilkes Booth, who stayed here eight days before assassinating Abraham Lincoln, and Charles Dickens, who lived here for five months in 1867-1868 during his tour of the United States.

The School Street that Charles Dickens would have seen was a narrow, busy street, and today not much has changed in that regard. In fact, the 1860 scene was probably busier than it appears. There are no pedestrians visible, which was probably due to the photographer using a long shutter speed, but in all likelihood there were plenty of people walking around at the time. None of the buildings are still standing from the first photo, though, except for the barely-visible King’s Chapel in the distance and the Old Corner Bookstore on the far right. The original part of the bookstore was built in 1712, and it was expanded up School Street in 1828 with the construction of the two three-story brick buildings on the right.

Mount Vernon Place, Boston

March 21, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Mount Vernon Place, seen from Joy Street in Boston around 1860. Image taken by Josiah Johnson Hawes, courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

Mount Vernon Place in 2105:

Mount Vernon Place is a short street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, located just west of the Massachusetts State House. It was once a full block long, and was developed in the 1830s on land that had once been owned by John Hancock and his family. As the 1860 photo shows, the street had a small park on the left side and eight townhouses on the right, and at the end of the street was the State House. The five houses closest to the State House were demolished in the 1910s when the building was expanded, and today only the three in the foreground survive. These three were built around 1833-1834, and have been largely unaltered on the exterior since then. They are among the many historic early 19th century townhouses that have become a defining feature of Beacon Hill, and they form a part of the Beacon Hill Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.