1910 time capsule opened at Cleveland Elementary
Thursday, January 27, 2011
A copper box buried for a century behind the Cleveland Elementary School cornerstone didn't hold a singing frog in a top hat or a stash of gold coins.
But the 1910 time capsule, opened Wednesday in front of San Francisco schoolchildren, teachers and city officials, was full of treasure nonetheless.
The beat-up box encased in concrete held preserved pieces of the past, untouched and forgotten inside a school wall as, just a few feet away, generations of children learned and played.
A letter, official city and trade union documents and pictures filled the 100-year-old capsule, offering a glimpse of San Francisco four years after the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed much of the city.
"To the Honorable Mayor of San Francisco. Whoever he May be. During the period in which this box may be opened," read the letter's envelope, the words carefully typed and underlined in blue ink.
The letter's authors were members of the Excelsior Homestead Progressive Association, "an improvement club," and it suggests they had little hope their words would ever be discovered or be legible if they were.
"...In the event that these lines are ever brought to light again it may be interesting to the readers to know something of the conditions prevailing at the time of the laying of the cornerstone," the Sept. 18, 1910, letter said. "The city of San Francisco has just about recovered from the effects of the great earthquake and fire of 1906 and is now on a fair way to gretaer prosperity than ever."
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