Reply #79: A ride down San Francisco's Market Street, September 1905...

[DemReadingDU]

The film is appx 13 minutes

The vertical hold on this archive footage is damaged for the first five minutes and at the end, and especially between 0:20 and 1:20. Despite this, it remains compelling.

You may like to note a street sweeper (0:20); people only just escaping being run over (6:02; 7:44; 8:37); a galloping horse (6:44); a farm wagon and shire horse; (8:43) a very near crash between the cable car and a motor car (9:30); a woman in an elaborate hat (9:58); a man in a cape (10:15); and the closing frames of children.

http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2010/04/a-ride-down-san-franciscos-market-street-september-1905/



Here is a side-by-side comparison of two filmed journeys down Market Street shot in April of 1906 sourced from the Prelinger Archives at http://www.archive.org . The video on the left has enjoyed wide circulation online, but has often been incorrectly dated to 1905. Subsequent research by Historian David Kiehn of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, has determined that the footage was actually shot by Harry and Herbert Miles on April 14th, 1906, only 4 days before the catastrophic event and subsequent fires leveled much of the city, resulting in conditions depicted in the video on the right, and of which the initial production source is unknown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TaxcXfSwdE appx 7 minutes



4/24/10 From Charles Hugh Smith - A 13-minute film of a cable car/trolley ride down Market Street in 1905 San Francisco.

My friend G.F.B. sent me this link to a fascinating 13-minute film from 1905 (or 1906) shot from the front of a cable car traveling down Market Street to the Ferry Building. If you've visited San Francisco, you know the Ferry Building is still with us, despite the 1906 earthquake/fire which leveled most of central San Francisco.

The population of San Francisco in 1905 was roughly 400,000--the 1900 Census pegged the number at 343,000. Thus the population was about half the modern total. But we should recall that much of modern-day San Francisco ("the Avenues", etc.) was still sand dunes in 1905.
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http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr10/1905-San-Francisco04-10.html