Paddock Discovers: SanFran 1906 Historic Film

[Robert S.]

To some, this additional dose of culture will cause pains from sores opened by other "Discoveries." But many will enjoy seeing this surreal historic film of San Francisco’s Main Street four days before the earthquake destroyed it all. Some entity, unknown to me, placed a film movie camera at the front of a streetcar, and captured the surprisingly large amount of busy people as the camera "dollied" down the center of Main Street. There were cars and horseless carriages competing for main-street, and pedestrians scurrying between them all. Not packed with action by any means, but truly epic and historic.

San Francisco 1906 Film

 

[Jim Craik]

Robert,

That is a great film, although I am very familiar with San Francisco, I do not recall seeing it before.

That little trip was down Market Street starting around Franklin and heading east toward the spire of the Ferry Building (still in use today) and the Embarcadero.

That last large building on the right is the old Palace Hotel, the story goes that the Great Enrico Caruso was staying there when the Earthquake hit, he was not amused. It was rebuilt and is also in use today.

I wonder, with all those horses, there seems to be very little in the way of horse poop......................

Anyway, thanks for the little trolly ride back into history.

 

[Robert S.]

Higher Quality Film File Discovered

Robert,

That is a great film, although I am very familiar with San Francisco, I do not recall seeing it before.

Jim, thanks for clearing up details on street names and remarkable sights for all of us! I found another file type of that movie in an mp4 format. It's a higher quality digitized version, and when opened with a QuickTime player, instead of one's browser player, it allows one to greatly enlarge the viewing screen without pixalation. It doesn't have the soundtrack though. I've loaded it on the server:

San Francisco 1906 Movie Higher Quality.mp4

Thanks again, Robert