Carl Nolte, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle March 7, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Monday, March 7, 2011
The Smithsonian Institution has discovered rare color photographs of the ruins of San Francisco from the 1906 earthquake. The images, taken by photography pioneer Frederick Ives, appear to be the earliest color photographs of San Francisco ever taken.
They were part of a set of six taken in the months after the earthquake and show some of the ruins along Market Street and scenes taken from the roof of the Hotel Majestic, on Sutter Street near Gough Street.
Everything is in color - buildings and billboards, a green streetcar on Market Street and a rust-colored church on Sutter Street damaged by the earthquake. A close examination of the billboards shows one advertising women's shoes on sale for 25 cents and another for chewing tobacco.
The pictures also show temporary wood buildings that are unpainted. The effects of the huge fire that followed the quake are also visible, especially on the scarred walls of the Flood Building, which still stands at Powell and Market streets.
The photos give an insight into what the city looked like 105 years ago.
"We only know the world (of the past) in black and white," said Anthony Brooks, a volunteer at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. It is startling, he said, to see in photos the city as it really was not long after the earthquake and fire - the sky blue, the streets lined with gray rubble and the walls plastered with advertising.
In addition to the Flood Building, several other San Francisco landmarks are clearly identifiable. Among them are the ruins of the Emporium department store on the south side of Market Street between Fourth and Fifth streets, the Call Building at Market and Third - now the Central Tower - and the Ferry Building in the distance.
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