Other Places Archives - Page 14 of 21

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

May 21, 2016May 21, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The corner of Grant Avenue and Washington Street in San Francisco, around 1920-1930. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Arnold Genthe Collection.

The view in 2015:

While the Arnold Genthe photo in the previous post showed San Francisco’s Chinatown before the 1906 earthquake, this view a block away shows the neighborhood some 20 years after it was rebuilt. By this time, though, Chinatown was seeing the effects of many years of anti-Chinese immigration policies, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which made it almost impossible for Chinese women or families to immigrate to the United States. When the first photo was taken, the neighborhood’s population was at an all-time low, and this would not begin to rise again until after World War II, when the Exclusion Act was repealed due to American alliances with China during the war.

Today, it is the largest Chinese community in the world outside of Asia, and in the past 90 years or so this particular view has hardly changed. The building is still standing, as are the ones in the distance to the left, and even minor details such as the fire escapes and the lamppost are the same as they were in the 1920s. The influence of Chinese culture is still very apparent, and Grant Avenue in particular, as shown here, is a major tourist destination in 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: Chinatown, San Francisco (1)

May 21, 2016May 21, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The corner of Jackson Street and Grant Avenue in San Francisco, around 1896-1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Arnold Genthe Collection.

The scene in 2015:

San Francisco’s Chinatown is the largest Chinese community in the world outside of Asia, and it was also America’s original Chinatown. Immigrants from China arrived here around the same time that almost everyone else did, during the Gold Rush of the late 1840s and early 1850s. Later on, many other Chinese people came to find work on projects such as the Transcontinental Railroad, and this neighborhood became an ethnic enclave within the city.

Photographer Arnold Genthe was primarily known for his portrait work, and his clients included many notable politicians, writers, and entertainers. In addition, he photographed the immediate aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, including the one in the previous post, but his works also included hundreds of photos of Chinatown that were taken beginning in the 1890s. His collection, which includes the first photo here, provides the only real glimpse into everyday life in Chinatown before the earthquake.

This scene, along with the rest of Chinatown, was completely destroyed in the earthquake, and some politicians sought to use the disaster to rebuild Chinatown further from the center of the city. However, the plans ultimately failed, and Chinatown was rebuilt here, where it continues to be a vibrant community as well as a popular tourist destination in the city.

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: Sacramento Street, San Francisco

May 19, 2016May 18, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Looking down Sacramento Street from near Powell Street in San Francisco, on April 18, 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Arnold Genthe Collection.

Sacramento Street in 2015:

The first photo is probably the most famous image from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and it was taken by noted photographer Arnold Genthe in the hours that immediately followed the earthquake, before the fires spread across the city. Most of the other post-earthquake images that I have featured here show the city days or weeks after the fires had been put out, when the city was beginning to rebuild. However, this scene shows the disaster as it was still unfolding, as residents stood in the streets and watched the city burn below them.

Years later, Genthe mentioned the photograph in his autobiography, commenting on the almost surreal nature of the scene, with the city burning in the distance and spectators sitting in chairs on the sidewalk, calmly watching as the fire moved closer. He wrote,

“Of the pictures I had made during the fire, there are several, I believe, that will be of lasting interest. There is particularly the one scene that I recorded the morning of the first day of the fire [along Sacramento Street, looking toward the Bay] which shows, in a pictorially effective composition, the results of the earthquake, the beginning of the fire and the attitude of the people. On the right is a house, the front of which had collapsed into the street. The occupants are sitting on chairs calmly watching the approach of the fire. Groups of people are standing in the street, motionless, gazing at the clouds of smoke. When the fire crept up close, they would just move up a block. It is hard to believe that such a scene actually occurred in the way the photograph represents it.”

Perhaps the people in the photo assumed that the fire was too distant to threaten them, but as they were watching the fire department was struggling with broken water mains and limited manpower, and the city government was making poor decisions that, in the coming days, would enable the fire to spread far further than it otherwise may have. By the next day, the fire had moved up the hill, and all of the buildings in the foreground were destroyed.

When the first photo was taken, the bay was not visible because of the dense smoke in the distance. Over a century later, it still isn’t visible from here, because of the tall skyscrapers that have since been built in the Financial District. The cable car line in the first photo was eliminated years ago, and the street is now served by a bus line that runs off of the overhead wires at the top of the 2015 photo. While the buildings from the first photo may be gone, at least one pre-earthquake organization is still here. The brick building partway down the hill on the left side of the photo was the Presbyterian Mission House, a Christian organization that worked to rescue Chinese girls from slavery and sex trafficking. After the earthquake, the organization rebuilt on the same site, and today it is still operated as the Cameron House, named in honor of Donaldina Cameron, who was the superintendent at the time of the earthquake.

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

May 18, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The view of Portsmouth Square in San Francisco, with Telegraph Hill in the distance, in January 1851. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Daguerreotypes Collection.

Portsmouth Square in 2015:

When the first photo was taken in January 1851, San Francisco was in the middle of a massive population boom spurred by the California Gold Rush. Just a few years earlier, it had been a small Mexican village of several hundred inhabitants, and was named Yerba Buena. In 1846, during the Mexican-American War, the USS Portsmouth arrived to claim the settlement for the United States, and the sailors raised an American flag here at what is now called Portsmouth Square. The following year, Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco, and in 1848 California officially became part of the United States.

At the time, there were about a thousand residents in San Francisco, but this figure grew exponentially as gold seekers poured into the city from around the world. Portsmouth Square was at the center of much of this activity, and the foreground of the 1851 scene shows a variety of businesses here. On the far left is the California Restaurant, and next to it is the Alta California, a newspaper that, about 15 years later, employed a young journalist with the pen name of Mark Twain. Further to the right are some of the seedier elements of the city, reflective of its “wild west” days during the Gold Rush. The three buildings to the right were, from left to right, the Louisiana, the Bella Union, and the Sociedad, all of which were saloons and gambling houses that sought to liberate the newly-wealthy gold miners of their money.

In the distance of the first photo is Telegraph Hill, one of the city’s many hills. It was still sparsely populated when the first photo was taken, but at the top of the hill is a semaphore station that had been built in 1849. This semaphore telegraph, as it was known as, had a tower with arms that could be raised or lowered to visually communicate messages, giving the hill its name. From here, the operator could view ships passing through Golden Gate and could signal information to the city about its port of origin, cargo, and any important news.

Today, nothing is left from the original photo. Anything that was still standing 55 years later would have been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, when fires swept across much of the city, including Portsmouth Square and parts of Telegraph Hill. Portsmouth Square is now a public park at the center of San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood, as seen in the foreground of the 2015 photo. In the distance, Telegraph Hill is mostly hidden from view, but some of the buildings are visible, including the Coit Tower, which was built in 1933 on the site of the old semaphore telegraph.

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 Fire, San Francisco

May 15, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Palace Hotel, seen from the corner of Market and Montgomery Streets as it burned on April 18, 1906, in the aftermath of the earthquake. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The scene in 2015:

As explained in an earlier post, the Palace Hotel was San Francisco’s premiere hotel from when it opened in 1875 until its destruction in 1906. Like so many other buildings across the city, the hotel survived the earthquake itself with minimal damage, but fires soon began to spread throughout the city. Once they reached the hotel, the substantial amount of wood paneling inside allowed the flames to quickly engulf the entire building, as seen in the first photo. In the foreground, soldiers stand guard on Market Street, watching helplessly as one of the city’s most prominent landmarks was gutted by fire.

The view in this post, taken facing the opposite direction on Market Street, shows the burned-out remains of the hotel after the fire. It was soon demolished, and in 1909 the present-day Palace Hotel opened on the same spot. There is one building left standing from the first photo, though. Barely visible on the far right of the photo is the Monadnock Building, which was still under construction at the time of the earthquake. It survived the fires, and was completed the following year.

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: James C. Flood Mansion, San Francisco

May 22, 2016May 14, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The James C. Flood Mansion on California Street in San Francisco, in the aftermath of the April 18, 1906 earthquake. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The house in 2015:

James C. Flood was born in New York City, but when he was in his early 20s he joined the California Gold Rush and moved to San Francisco in 1849. He had limited success in gold mining, but after a short time running the Auction Lunch Saloon, he began purchasing shares in silver mines and eventually made his fortune off of the Comstock Lode in Nevada. In 1886, he built this mansion on Nob Hill, where many of the city’s other millionaires lived at the time.

He only lived here for three years before his death in 1889, and at the time of the 1906 earthquake his daughter Cora lived here. Most of the other Nob Hill mansions were made of wood, so although the Flood Mansion was completely gutted by the fires, the stone exterior survived. The property was sold to the Pacific-Union Club, who rebuilt the interior and added wings to either side of the building and a third floor. Today, it is still used as their clubhouse, and along with the nearby Fairmont Hotel it is one of the few pre-earthquake buildings still standing on Nob Hill.

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.