I tried to get a shot with the 14-Mission sign right below Valencitro, but it was not to be. This is the best you’re getting.

Anyway, we’ve all seen the majestic glory of Old SF, who have revealed the secret history of the SFPL’s most excellent (though unfortunately lowish-resolution) photo archive.  I can’t tell you how happy I am that they took the time to geotag things.  It certainly makes my time-wasting more efficient.  (Hey, OldSFians, ping me, we need to talk about integrating the Sanborn maps!)

Geotagging these resources is but the first step.  There’s also the efforts of Historypin (who recently grabbed Jon Voss, of LookBackMaps fame) where we align photos and tag more information about them. (I cannot wait until we get a geohistory API…)

Anyway, many of you have probably seen the series of photos from the corner of 24th and Valencia from 1929.  This one looks east down 24th towards Potrero, standing next to Papalote. The building on the right (SW corner) and one across the street on the left (NE corner) are still there.

Hey, ice cream!  And we sure could use a deli on that corner again. Strangely enough, that’s a gas station across the street (where the church is now), and the Fiesta ice cream building will eventually flip to a gas station.

Another view looking south towards Bernal where you can see a lumberyard and a proto-fixie.

(If anyone wants to load these in historypin and do the before/after Google Street View thing, go for it, I’m so out of time it’s absurd.)

The Sanborn maps for this intersection are particular pain in the ass to put together — basically four different maps in two different volumes. But such is my love for you all and of history.

Anyway, here’s 1915 vs 1950 side by side. Goodbye lumberyards and the candy factory and light industry and the train station (which is a post in itself). (Click to make bigger.)

(I also did a quick and dirty map of that corner in 1899 for the 200 Yards project a while back.)

Zooming in 24th and Valencia, here’s 1915 vs 1950 in an animated GIF with a 35 year delta. The two photos were taken on the left looking right (east looking west), and top looking down (north looking south) respectively.

Click on it if nothing’s happening, or to get a wider version.

Given the title of the post, you can probably figure out where I’m going next.  The interesting thing about the 1929 photo is there are actually TWO of them, taken less than a minute apart. It’s as if the photographer knew that we would use a format invented in 1987 to animate his 82 year old images!   The detail in any one of these photos is impressive, but the animation below makes it that much more real.

(Click for a 1000 pixel wide version).

Note the kids hamming it up. They’re in their 90s now.

And check out the streetcar under the Fiesta Ice Cream sign! I never noticed it until I made this animation.

Anyway, enjoy the mildly coherent historic discourse and retina jarring animated GIFs.

The black and white images you often see here in the Burrito Justice Time Machine are merely scans of microfilm versions of the color originals. Mr Rumsey worked with the 6th Floor of the San Francisco Public Library to get the originals digitized, and the results are rather wonderful.

Oh, the irony of these volumes being damaged by fire in 1906.

I’ll obviously be digging into these a lot more over the next few weeks/months/years/rest of my life, but just for flavor, here’s the old Southern Pacific train station at Valencia and 25th.

Here’s the station itself:

1906, looking towards the city (well, northeast, actually). via Calisphere

Looking in the opposite direction (south):

(This and more in a nice collection of shots along the old SPRR line in this unfortunately stagnant blog.)

There’s another picture of policemen at the station waiting for President McKinley but I can’t find it right now. UPDATE: found it, but it doesn’t show the station — I think that’s looking north across the triangular yard towards the building across 25th St – 299 San Jose to be precise. You can see the funky bay window on the full map.  Nice turret! (That would make a great place to put a webcam! If, um, well you know what I mean.)

Oh, and for those concerned that there was only one saloon on this block (hi TK!) fret not as there was one just north of the station, and a ton up by 24th & Valencia, including a billiard-saloon combo! (Right next to a church.)

Anyway, here are the index files for our side of the city. Once your figure out the map number your block is on, it’s easiest to search for “[map number] Sanborn 1905″ in the search box. (At some point I will make a mapesque clickable HTML grid — today is not that day however.)

Volume 6: La Lengua, Noe Valley, Glen Park, Castro (basically east of Douglass, south of 17th, west of Mission) along with a little bit of the Sunset and Ingleside, Oceanview and Portola):

Volume 5: Mission, Bernal, Potrero, Dogpatch, Hunters Point (basically south of 16th, east of Mission):

Have fun. I apologize in advance for the massive drop in productivity in the Mission, La Lengua and Bernal this week.

UPDATE: To avoid hue and cry and accusations of Mission/ La Lengua favoritism, here are the index files to the other volumes:

Volume 1: Above Market , to Van Ness (North Beach, Downtown, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, Civic Center)

Volume 2: South of Market, north of 16th, SE of market

Volume 3: Western Addition, Van Ness to Broderick, Market to the bay (Pac Heights, Cow Hollow, Marina-to-be, Duboce, Lower Haight)

Volume 4: Broderick to the beach (Upper Haight, and what will become The Richmond & Presidio Heights)

p.s. So it looks like the Luna viewer isn’t very (read: at all) iPad friendly. Anyone know of an iPad/iPhone MrSID viewer? Or better yet something in HTML5? (Though I would totally buy a David Rumsey iPad app. Hint hint, @DavidRumseyMaps.)

And as an added bonus for those of you who read this entire article, here is that map of the block of Valencia / San Jose / 25th / 26th in BurritoVision:

One day I dream of cropping, merging and converting this entire Sanborn map set into seamless Google Earth tiles.  Imagine an iPhone app where you could stand on a corner and pull up the Sanborn map to see what was there.  You turn around, and the map rotates with you. Awesome, no?

(click image to zoom)

UPDATE: Fundraiser for the displaced La Lenguans who lost their homes in the fire this Friday night at El Rio (8pm-2am, donations at the door, Hard French DJs will be spinning)

It’s the second branch to fall in the past year or so.  A panorama of the tree in better days:

This tree is well over 100 years old, and may have been planted by Bancroft (of the Bancroft Library) himself.

You may have seen the bronze historical marker below the tree – Hubert Howe Bancroft had his library at Valencia and Army / CC for 26 years.

Bancroft moved to SF in 1853 at age 20 to extend the family bookstore.  He started collecting books, maps and documents in 1860.  By 1870 he had opened a library on Market & 3rd in 1870, with 120 boxes of books. Within 10 years he had outgrown it and moved 622 boxes to a new library at Valencia and Army next to St. Luke’s hospital. (So, how do I get that job?)

I’ve always wondered why he chose to build on that corner.  It was pretty far out there in the day, and he lived on Van Ness & Sutter.

Good transit may have been a factor: streetcars had been running on Valencia since 1865, but stopped at 25th St (next to the SFSJ railroad station).  The streetcar line was converted to a cable car in 1883, and the line was extended across Army St (the car barn was at Valencia and Mission).

A picture of the “new” library sometime after 1880, looking from Valencia and Army, to the SW. (No fig trees as far as I can see.)

1886 Sanborn map (west is up). Tiny St. Luke’s hospital visible to the left.  Also, an “old ladies home”.

1888 view looking to the NW down from Bernal – the Bancroft library is just behind the big white barn looking building. (Can’t say that I see a tree.  If anyone has a higher resolution version of this I will buy you all the beer you can drink in one sitting.)

1900 Sanborn map.  (Cool, a hen house and a windmill!)

Because it amuses me, I include an undated picture of the St. Luke’s hospital  Taken from Valencia & Tiffany, looking NW. (1890s? 1900? When did guys stop wearing those hats?) Bancroft Library would just be to the right (along with our tree?) You can see the two hospital buildings on the Sanborn map above. (Nice deck!) Note also the tiny predecessor to the 1912 steps. And that retaining wall has been around forever.

Anyway, the Bancroft’s building was the only major library in the city to escape the fires of 1906. Alas UC Berkeley bought the Bancroft Library in 1906, moving it across the bay. “Three great vans full consisting of over three tons have already arrived . . . but it occupies five hours for a wagon to come from Valencia Street to Berkeley.” (24th to Berkeley on BART is half an hour.)

After Bancroft, the building turned into the “Eng Skell Company soda fountain supplies, syrup factory and warehouse” – a rather inelegant transition from a world class research library. Here we have the 1913 Sanborn map:

The shot below is supposed to be from 1910 and is labeled as the St. Luke’s, though I suspect it’s the employees of Eng Skell’s. (If they were nurses they’d be wearing their hats, no?)  Sometime in the early ’1os, 1538 was taken over by St. Luke’s as an outpatient clinic.

Our Mortenson Fig could very well be the one on the left – it lines up perfectly with the Sanborn-Google overlay (library in red). If so, I’d guess that Bancroft planted it 20 years before this? Any tree people, feel free to comment on my growthstemation.

Note that the Guerrero side (top) isn’t misaligned — remember the city pushed back those house 20 feet when they widened Guerrero in the early 1950s. (Oh, and the green square? Just the site of the Bernal Rancho in the 1840s-1860s.)

The old library stood until the mid 195os: “FIGURING IT OUT–Joseph Zem, right, director of St. Luke’s Hospital, and Episcopal Canon Charles Guilbert, talk about the new hospital annex to be built where they’re standing. The 74-year-old building behind them, formerly a library, will be torn down.”

(You can barely see the “ENG” above the door from the Skell days.)

I suspect our Moreton Bay fig is just visible on right in this photo.

A photography project focusing on
San Francisco neighborhoods
200 yards at a time.

The first installment of 200 Yards — Valencia & 24th — last Wednesday at Heart, was packed.

Behold our 218 vara circle of interest:

The exhibit is up at Heart until September 20th, so go buy some scallops and a jar of red and stare at the wall for a while (or better yet buy something).

In the meantime, look upon my panoramas, ye mighty, and despair!

Click to zoom – Armand‘s are the 4 black & white shots in the center. As for the others, I lost my photo list so I sadly have no idea who took which photos.

I liked the set of street signs, though the standard curved panorama didn’t do them justice:

So I deployed my advanced and ever subtle shift-sideways panorama technique (note my multiple shadows). Once again, click to zoom for 2800 pixel wide madness.

And for some historical perspective:

The US Coast Survey Map near what will be 24th and Valencia in 1859. Racetracks, a small settlement along the road to San Jose just north of Precita Creek and Serpentine Ave (anyone know the story on that one?) The Bernal Racho is just visible at the bottom).

…and 1869, roads in place, previous settlement gone. San Francisco and San Jose RR cuts through the hood.

1889 Sanborn map of the 200 Yard area (quick and dirty paste, not my best work, lots of alignment issues, sorry).

Here’s the block that Heart is on. Heart was an empty field, the gas station was a drug store and two saloons (surprise), there was a candy factory in the middle of the block.  There was a chinese laundry, a butcher and another saloon (surprise) on the corner of 23rd and Valencia.

(Google Earth’s image overlay is really starting to piss me off — how about some upgrades? Drag and drop of images? Better resolution?  Tiling tools?  Grrrr.) Anyway, the unlayered map.

Much more to discuss in the area, but that will have to wait for another time. And thus concludes your history lesson, enjoy the weekend.

URLs are hard to write in chalk, so here’s the post they’re referencing.

Before:

After:

Details, more photos and maps here.

Wait, what’s in that gap between the branches?

Zoom in a little more…

Good day, moon.

Gratuitous shot of wispy clouds that were in front of the moon but passed by before I could get my camera. Damned wind.

Moon, molding.  Molding, moon.

I never really saw that many people inside since it opened in early 2006.  Yelp suggests that the owners are redoing the menu. The La Lengua corridor does not forgive mediocrity.

Pi Bar certainly shows you can draw crowds with the right idea and execution. Show us what you’ve got, SEBnG.

But I do love this exciting Toad’s review on their website, via yelp:

the mission jumps into the bay…and swims to the bottom of the ocean…and stares…and stares…and stares at the bottom…and finds its soul…and finds its eternal flame…and emerges with newly found clarity and resolve…and produces a spectacular working class establishment that the old man would be proud of…

(drumroll again!)

toad’s is that establishment! toad’s is the old man’s prayer to the gentrification of the mission! toad’s is the retrosexual’s answer to the metro-pussification of the mission!

toad’s is simply a glorious pub/restaurant in the outskirt of the valencia area (valencia and 26th), which means no hipsters or metros cuz we all know that those people are too scared to venture past 24th street. omg! it’s soooo scaaary out there!

24th is certainly a hipster semipermeable membrane.

Anyway, that building has been there since at least 1889, and as you will no doubt be unsurprised, the corner has always had bars and restaurants aplenty as we can see from the Sanborn maps.  (Red are bars and green are restaurants. S stands for store, F for Flats and D for dwelling. (The Sanborn codes are deceiving – for the record, “Out Ho” sadly does not stand for out house, just “Outer Building”. But FB stands for Female Boarding, aka Bordello.))

Click to zoom:

Drilling into what was where when — in 1889, Toad’s/1499 Valencia was actually 1441 Valencia (but nothing shows up in the directories).  By 1899 the block had been renumbered we see that 1499 Valencia was run by James and Mary Ward.  James passed away sometime between 1901 and 1907, and  Mary ran the saloon for a few years afterward. (There is a widow Mary Ward listed in the neighborhood until 1913 though it is unclear if it’s the same one.)

By 1918 Chris Petersen had taken over, but Prohibition forced him to turn it into a soda fountain shop which he ran until at least 1927.

The history of the spot now occupied by Dovre Club across the street is even more interesting.

From at least 1886 to at least 1901 (if not 1906), a man with the particularly awesome name of Cornelius Crowley ran a saloon on the NW corner of 26th and Valencia.

Before the renumbering of Valencia, 1498 was 1442, so he lived above the bar in the start. But he soon did well enough to buy a lot on San Jose and 25th in 1888:

His house is in orange below.

Nice front yard! Cool discovery – that octagon is a 50 foot windmill that lasted until at least 1915.

In 1896 Cornelius threw a summer saturday night party at his house that was pleasant enough to be noticed by the SF Call:

He continued to run the bar for at least another decade until his sons (or so I assume) took over:

Remember that 212 changed to 242 in the mid 00′s.

You can see the progression on this block of San Jose Ave from 1889 to then (and effectively today). 1889, 1900, 1915, 1950. (Rotated with west up, north to the right.)

UPDATE: I initially thought he got to live in the cool house that now sits there, but I just figured out it was not built until 1916. But a long-time Mission dweller named John Stelling moved in soon after it was built, and lived there until 1924. Residents of 242 from 1911-1924 listed here.

UPDATED UPDATE: The current owner of 242 SJ reports that Mayor Angelo Rossi (1931-1944) may have owned the property, and that

Rossi was also a bootlegger and rumor has it that his fortune more than doubled during prohibition. We recently opened a wall in the basement and found more than a case of very old Carta Blanca bottles that probably were holed up there by a resident drunk or construction worker as we think that part of the house was added afterwards.

John Stelling was a bookkeeper, and I thought it was a bit odd he moved into a giant house like that. One possibly related tidbit — he worked for Rolph Shipping, owned by Rossi’s predecessor, Mayor “Sunny Jim” Rolph (1911-1931), who helped start Muni amongst other things. Connections?

But back to Cornelius –  the last record I have of him of  before he passed on to the great big bar in the sky is 1909. His family continued to run the bar until Prohibition. (Given the number of bars in the city, that transition must have been a brutal real estate issue.) Afterwards, it was a cigar shop, a restaurant, and a grocery.

(As for after 1927, that would involve me actually getting up and going to a library which isn’t going to happen soon.)

So — next time you’re in the Dovre, make a toast to Cornelius Crowley and his epic 35 year bar empire.