1900s

Lost New England Goes West: Palace Hotel, San Francisco (3)

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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.

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

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The hotel in 2015:

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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: Chinatown, San Francisco (1)

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

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The scene in 2015:

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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

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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.

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Sacramento Street in 2015:

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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: Palace Hotel Fire, San Francisco

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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.

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The scene in 2015:

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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

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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.

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The house in 2015:

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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.

Lost New England Goes West: Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco

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The Fairmont San Francisco, seen from the corner of California and Powell Streets in the aftermath of the April 18, 1906 earthquake. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The hotel in 2015:

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The Fairmont Hotel was still under construction when the 1906 earthquake hit. Structurally, it was heavily damaged, but it survived, and for a time was even used for emergency planning meetings before the fires made their way up Nob Hill. The burn stains over the windows in the first photo show the extent of the fire that gutted the hotel, but it would soon be repaired. The owners hired architect Julia Morgan to oversee the reconstruction, and the hotel opened exactly a year after the earthquake.

Nearly 40 years later, in 1945, it played a role in establishing the United Nations. While World War II was just coming to an end that summer, representatives from 50 countries met here at the hotel to draft the United Nations Charter, which was later signed at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, and went into effect on October 26, 1945. Since then, it has remained a prominent San Francisco hotel, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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.