For 12 minutes, the silent black-and-white film, known as A Trip Down Market Street, provides viewers a look at 1906 San Francisco that, over a century later, is both nostalgic and foreboding.
The footage was recorded by cinematic innovators the Miles brothers, who mounted a camera to the front of a cable car and simply let it capture the action on the city’s main thoroughfare, while rolling along from 8th Street toward The Embarcadero with the distinctive Ferry Building inching closer with each frame.
Children rush out in front of the cable car and beam big smiles to the camera. Men, wearing dark suits, walk to work with newspapers tucked under their arms. A few women stroll past, protected from the sun by broad-brimmed hats. Horse-drawn buggies, bicycles and newfangled automobiles wildly weave from one side of the road to the other and back again, narrowly avoiding collisions.
The images combine to create a sentimental glimpse into daily San Francisco life over a century ago.
“A Trip Down Market Street is an interesting film on several levels,” wrote David Kiehn, historian at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont, Cali., during an email interview. “First, the excellent quality of images commands the attention of the viewer. Details are apparent. Those people in the film looking at the camera are looking at you, making a connection through time. The moving camera creates an evolving landscape. The pedestrians, wagons, trolleys and automobiles provide a swirl of activity that is always involving.”
But there is darkness, too.
The film was made approximately one week before an earthquake – with a magnitude between 7.7 to 7.9 – struck the city on April 18, 1906. An estimated 700 to 3,000 people died and approximately a quarter-million citizens were left homeless because of the quake and ensuing fire.
So, unbeknownst to the people casually strolling along Market Street, their lives were about to tragically change. But, from that disaster, emerged one of the most vibrant and diverse cities in the United States.
“Of course, the loss of life was terrible, but the entire city’s life was about to come to an end as well,” said Rick Laubscher, Board Chair and President of Market Street Railway, an organization dedicated to celebrating and preserving San Francisco’s rich streetcar and cable car history, in an email. “The antiquated cable cars on Market Street would be replaced by modern electric streetcars, whose speed, double that of the cable cars, opened entirely new patterns of residential and business development that would not have taken place anywhere near as soon. What you are really looking at here is a shade being pulled down over an era. The impact I feel when watching this film is that a social, economic, and cultural period is about to end, to be replaced by something considerably different.”
Originally, the Library of Congress dated the film, which was preserved by film archivist Rick Prelinger, to seven months before the earthquake because, according to the LOC website, “the state of completion of the Flood Building and the Monadnock Building indicate that the year is 1905. Also, the apparent position of the sun in relation to the time visible on the Ferry Building clock point to early September as the month.” The Exploratorium, a San Francisco museum dedicated to science, art, and human perception, even celebrated the film’s 100th anniversary in 2005.
But Kiehn soon discovered the movie, which takes viewers along a 1.55-mile trip at an average speed of 10 miles per hour, was from a time even closer to the earthquake.
When watching the film, he noticed water puddles in a few spots on the road. But, according to newspaper reports, San Francisco did not experience any rain in September 1905. Kiehn also learned two of the automobile license plates seen on cars were issued in early 1906, including No. 4867, belonging to a 41-year-old chauffeur named Jay Berry Anway, who, for some unknown reason, repeatedly drove his car in front of the camera.
Later, Kiehn unearthed an April 28, 1906 Miles brothers’ advertisement from a showbiz newspaper called the New York Clipper, that described the footage as having been filmed one week before the earthquake.
Kiehn was then certain the film showed San Francisco just a few days before disaster struck.
“It’s always a pleasure to reach a satisfying conclusion to a quest for information,” said Kiehn. “The search can be fun, but when theories suddenly become fact it makes all the hard work worthwhile. It keeps me going, looking for other forgotten people, places and films of the silent era.”
His research into A Trip Down Market Street still continues. “I’d like to know what happened to the camera negative of the film, and others made by the Miles Brothers, an important pioneering film company. Chances are the films were destroyed or disintegrated over time as so many films have, but it would be good to know their fate,” he wrote.
The 1906 film itself barely escaped destruction.
It is believed the Miles brothers shipped it to New York City on a train one day before the earthquake demolished their Market Street office.