Derek Strahan

Aside from running the Lost New England blog, Derek Strahan is the author of two books: Lost Springfield, Massachusetts and New England Then and Now, along with being the host of the Western Mass History podcast. Derek is a graduate of Westfield State University, with degrees in English and Regional Planning, and he currently works as a land use and environment planner in Western Massachusetts. Derek also serves on the board of directors of the Springfield Preservation Trust, and he lives in Western Massachusetts with his wife Melissa and their two sons.

Lost New England Goes West: Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco

June 1, 2016June 1, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral at the corner of California Street and Grant Avenue in San Francisco, around 1856. Image courtesy of the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

The church around 1866. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Lawrence & Houseworth Collection.

The church in 2015:

As mentioned in earlier posts, San Francisco of the 1850s was very different from just a decade earlier. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, its population was just a thousand, but by the early 1850s it had jumped to over 30,000, and was rapidly growing. To accommodate the number of Catholics, the city’s first cathedral was built here in 1854, and the building has stood here ever since. At the time, it was located near the fringes of the city, near Chinatown and some of the notorious red light districts, which explains the “Son, Observe the Time and Fly from Evil” inscription just below the clock.

The first photo was taken before the steeple was completed, but by the early 1860s the church looked essentially the same as it does today. It served as the cathedral for the Archdiocese of San Francisco until 1891, and since then it has been a parish church. In 1906, it was one of the few buildings in the area to survive the earthquake, which did no serious structural damage to it. However, the earthquake started fires that gutted the building, so today the only original part of the church is the brick exterior.

The surrounding Chinatown neighborhood was rebuilt after the fires, and today it is home to the largest Chinese population in the world outside of Asia. This section of Grant Avenue in particular is a major tourist attraction, and Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral remains both an active church and also a major landmark that dates back to the city’s early years as a Gold Rush town.

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: Palace Hotel, San Francisco (3)

June 1, 2016May 31, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, seen from the corner of Market, Kearny, and Geary Streets in San Francisco, probably on April 15, 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The new Palace Hotel, around 1910-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Bain Collection.

The hotel in 2015:

The first photo here shows the original Palace Hotel as it appeared shortly before it was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. The caption reads “The Palace April 15. Copyright 1906 Pillsbury Picture Co.”, so it appears to have been taken on April 15, 1906, just three days before the disaster. The hotel had been a San Francisco landmark since its completion in 1875, and as explained in an earlier post it had been specifically designed to withstand both earthquakes and fire. However, while its thick walls survived the earthquake itself, the building was gutted by the subsequent fires, as seen in the first photo of this earlier post, which was taken as the building burned. Yet another previous post, taken from almost the same spot as this April 15 scene, shows the burned-out remains of the hotel and other buildings along Market Street.

Three years later, the hotel was rebuilt on the same site, as seen in the second photo, and it retained its status as one of the city’s premier hotels. Several years after the second photo was taken, President Warren G. Harding died in an eighth-floor suite on this side of the building. He was visiting the city during a tour of the west coast, arriving on July 29, 1923. His health had been rapidly deteriorating amid a busy schedule, and he spent several days in the hotel before his sudden death from an apparent heart attack on August 2.

Today, not much has changed in the “new” Palace Hotel’s exterior appearance. It remains a prominent San Francisco hotel, and the buildings on either side of it are also still standing from the second photo. Market Street is as busy as it was in the early 1900s, and trolleys still run down the middle of the street as they did a century ago. Part of the “F” line of the Muni system, it runs historic streetcars, a few of which date back to the era the second photo was taken. The one in this particular 2015 scene is a PCC streetcar that was built in 1948, making it still far closer in age to the first two photos than to the present-day.

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: Stockton Street, San Francisco (2)

June 1, 2016May 30, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking north on Stockton Street from Market Street in San Francisco, in the early 1860s. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Lawrence & Houseworth Collection.

The scene in 2015:

The southern end of Stockton Street is here at Market Street, which has been the commercial center of San Francisco since it was first laid out a few years before the first photo was taken. The photo was possibly taken in 1860, because the scene in the foreground appears to show the construction of the Market Street Railway, a horse-drawn trolley system that opened here in 1860. Today, the trolley system is still in place, although this line now operates historic electric streetcars rather than their horse-drawn predecessors.

Today, this section of San Francisco in the vicinity of Union Square is a major shopping district. Nothing is left from the original photo; most of the small two and three story buildings were probably gone before the turn of the 20th century, and anything that would have been left would have been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. The two photos do have at least one thing in common, though – as in the 1860s view, the 2015 scene also shows a major public transit program in the works. As of 2016, San Francisco is building the Central Subway here, underneath Fourth Street and Stockton Street. The city does not have much in the way of true rapid transit lines, and this subway, which is scheduled to be completed in 2018, will provide much-needed service to the South of Market and Chinatown neighborhoods.

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: California Street, San Francisco (2)

May 25, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking east down California Street in between Grant and Stockton Streets in San Francisco, in 1863. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey Collection.

California Street in 2015:

When the first photo was taken, the United States was in the midst of the Civil War, and although the bulk of the fighting was some 2,000 miles away, California nonetheless contributed to the Union war effort. Thanks to the Gold Rush about 15 years earlier, San Francisco was a prosperous, rapidly-growing city, and much of this gold was used to fund the Union army. Although southern California had a substantial number of Confederate sympathizers at the time, the northern part of the state, including San Francisco, was predominantly pro-Union, and provided a number of soldiers who went east to fight.

After the Civil War, San Francisco’s prosperity continued, and this section of California Street in the distance became the city’s Financial District. However, the entire area was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and the resulting fires that spread across the city, and only a few buildings in this scene survived. The photo in this earlier post, taken from the base of the hill facing up California Street, shows some of the destruction.

The most notable survivor from the 1863 photo here is the Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral on the left, at the corner of Grant Avenue. Built in 1854, it withstood the earthquake itself, but was gutted by the fires that left only the brick walls standing. The interior was rebuilt in 1909, and the church is still standing today as a prominent landmark in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood.

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: Stockton Street, San Francisco

May 25, 2016May 25, 2016 by Derek Strahan

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

Stockton Street in 2015:

When the first photo was taken, most of the buildings in the scene were still fairly new. San Francisco did not see dramatic population growth until the 1849 gold rush, and most of this area was probably developed in the mid to late 1850s. However, everything here was destroyed in the fires after the 1906 earthquake, and in 1914 the street itself underwent some major changes when the Stockton Street Tunnel was built. This tunnel starts here directly underneath the foreground, and it carries traffic two and a half blocks through the hill, while the original street still goes up and over the hill. Today, Stockton Street is one of the two main streets in Chinatown, along with Grant Avenue, and this section in the distance of the photo is the neighborhood’s primary commercial center.

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: Portsmouth Square, San Francisco (2)

May 25, 2016May 25, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Facing west across Portsmouth Square from Kearny Street in San Francisco, around 1866. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Lawrence & Houseworth Collection.

The scene in 2015:

This earlier post shows Portsmouth Square in 1851, facing the north side of the square. Here, this first photo shows the west side of the square about 15 years later, after it had become a landscaped park. Anything from the first photo that was still standing 40 years later was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake; the photo in this earlier post shows the square, facing the opposite direction, in the aftermath of the disaster, when the square was covered in tents for displaced residents. Today, nothing is left from the original photo except for the square itself, which is still a public park and is located within the city’s Chinatown neighborhood.

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.