![Atop Empire State- in construction; Chrysler Bldg & [Daily] News in middle foreground. (1931)](../../../img/Atop-Empire-State-in-construction-Chrysler-Bldg-Daily-News-in-middle-foreground.-1931--199x123.jpg "Balancing on the Empire State, 1920s")
Thank you to Pen Moor for pointing to the current version above.
San Francisco’s Market Street, 1906
If you like this, check out:
- Footage of London streets, 1903
- Photobooth animations
- Colour photographs of Brighton beach, Saturday, June 16th, 1906
- Abandoned City Hall East
- The wallet that time forgot
- The Royal Wedding, 1923
- Colour photographs of America, 1920s-30s
The Romanov Family Albums- Colour photographs of US Supermarkets, 1950s-1960s
- Patent Medicine Trade Cards, c.1900
Miniature Pigeon Cameras, 1903- The Age of Adolescence by Joseph Sterling
- The Wedding of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier, September 12, 1953
- 100x100
- 'Princess Nicotine', 1909
Later analysis suggest the footage is actually from only four days before the 1906 quake.
Here is a side-by-side before and after of Market Street.
Thanks to Andy Anderson for these comments:
“I just finished watching it. The video has lots of flaws which makes it difficult to watch at times, but I think could be technically fixed. I downloaded it so I can watch it over.
It is great to see when its on large screen – like you are there. It is shown at normal speed, not like the old over speeded movies you usually see, so like I said, its like you are right there on full screen.
The absolute chaos of the street traffic is unbelievable. Early cars, horse-drawn wagons, street cars, people running left & right dodging around cars, wagons & each other with absolutely no traffic control or lights or anything.
People obviously are aware of the camera looking at it as they go by and kids running in front of the vehicle. I can only imaging that the camera must be on a street car but visible to the street.
If the video is fixed and it could be colorized, it would be like tim”e-travelling to San Francisco in 1905…”
Someone made a 7 minute excerpt of that film with an added soundtrack by Air (La Femme D’Argent) — makes it that much better.
Also, I read somewhere (I believe on archive.org) that this film was made to promote San Francisco – to show its bustling streets with lots of cars; the filmmakers went so far as to have the same car (full of six guys) drive in and out of the shot at various points. I believe it’s the car that comes into the frame at 8:35 (with a few boys hanging on to the back of it).
I love seeing how the women and girls carried themselves. My favorite part is the woman gingerly crossing the road, holding her skirts and making her way to the passing streetcar. Did it stop for her?
Look how many cars had the steering wheel on the righ hand side. And the lack of traffic control. Or control in general. No power lines either. Interesting. Very free form looking.Free enterprise.
Seems like there are no fat people! Either because there was no high fructose corn syrup in the diet, or the fat ones have all been run over.
There was one fat cop
would be great if someone could “normalize” this footage — I don’t know what the real term is — that same technique they did with the zapruder and the bigfoot footage where they eliminate camera shake by repositioning each frame keeping a given point in the image pinned down. Would be tricker with this because a given reference point is shifting as the camera is moving, but doable (probably you’d use the vanishing point, on the clock tower) for the locked point.
The normalised version exists!
Thanks for posting this and the one after the quake/ fire. It’s great to see the way things really looked in 1906 – not just ‘movie’ versions…..i didn’t know that there were videos taken after the quake/ fire – i thought it was just stills……
I loved this new version!
Then 4 days later the big earthquake happened.. My Grandmother came from Steilecom, Washington to help her sister at her boarding house which had survived the quake.
My Grandfather and his brothers came to help clean up the city and stayed in the boarding house.
They met.. married and had 10 children on their ranch in Smith Valley, Nevada
They featured this film, and the fellow that did research on when it was made, on the 60 Minutes the other night…. But they didn’t show the “after” film you guys have, it was a different one. I think the one on here makes a much better contrast. From this film….to one that looks like a hurricane came through.