A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire

I have seen the original Market Street 13-minute film and was quite impressed by it documenting the daily life of a busy San Francisco street days before the great earthquake.

But Adrianne Finelli's scanning of the film for Internet Archive is simply mind-blowing. Combined with Denis Shiryaev's upscaling and colorization, which is uploaded on YouTube, and you swear you are actually on the street car watching San Fran's life burst right in front of you.

What's so fascinating about the movie is the street life unfolding and captured by the filmmakers, the four Miles brothers. There are no traffic lights at any intersection, yet the combination of electric streetcars, the newly invented automobile, horse and buggy carriages, bicyclists and pedestrians on foot are all in synch as they cut across each other and amble on their way to conduct their business. Apparently there were a handful of motorized personal cars that continuously circled around the camera to make it appear traffic was a lot more chaotic than it really was. But it's still amazing to see these early internal combustion engine vehicles dodging all the obstacles in front of them.

Sad that in a few days many of the fine buildings seen here were destroyed by the earthquake and the resulting fires of that fateful April 18th, 1906 day. Over 3,000 people perished in the early morning earthquake/fires, and quite possibly there are several captured on the Miles' film that were listed on the deceased rolls. Such a reminder makes the trip down Market Street all the more poignant.

From the front of a cable car, a motion picture camera records a trip down Market Street, San Francisco, California, from a point between 8th & 9th Streets, Eastward to the cable car turnaround at the Ferry Building.

Maybe it was cheating, but I watched this with sound superimposed on top of the picture. It made it more entertaining, to be sure. But regardless, this is an incredible film. We know some of it was staged, but it still shows a busy city street in 1906. The clothes, the horses, the beards... this is a priceless document of history.

Apparently there is some debate on exactly when the film was made, but it does seem to be not long before the earthquake. Maybe a week, maybe more. But the exact date does not change the fact it captured San Francisco in its prime.

This is a mesmerizing film. It takes us down a true "memory lane", showcasing a Market Street of yesteryear. The horses and their carriages, the cable cars, the scurrying pedestrians, all in motion as we travel along.

It is also a poignant and haunting film, since we know that it was made mere days before the big San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent fire that destroyed almost everything we see!

This is a treasure that should be viewed by everyone at least once. Personally, I could run it in a continuous loop. There always seems to be something or someone new!

The updated, remastered, colorized version is highly recommended as well. It focuses in with sharper detail...

Just a few days before a ruinous earthquake struck a great city, the Miles Brothers Film Company mounted a movie camera on a cable car that proceeded to travel along the center of a commercial and busy Market Street towards the Ferry Terminal Building (14 April 1906). The result is a twelve-minute documentary of visual delight.

While many Western towns were slowly transforming from the days of cowboys (like gravel streets with wooden sidewalks), San Francisco had already made the change to a modern city. Some streets were paved, and there were the underground gas mains. Horses and wagons now share the road with the new automobiles, which weave in and out of slower moving traffic any way they can. Crossing the street was at one's own peril. Pedestrians cut in front of all kinds of moving traffic, and horses and wagons pull out in front of trolleys. It is amazing that there were no accidents on this film. This scene is before the days of traffic signals and police directing traffic at the main corners.

Note that auto steering wheels are mounted on the right. Some trolley cars are electrified (they cross Market Street) while others are still being pulled by horses (along Market Street), as was the case in the previous century. Bicycles can be seen. Everyone wears hats (except young people towards the end of the film), and formal wear predominates.

Some other observations:

• Around 6:00 and again at the 7:45 mark, see individual pedestrians on the right side nearly struck by automobiles. • Just before the 7:00 mark, two automobiles nearly collide. • At 9:43, as a trolley approaches from the opposite side towards the viewer, auto on left (driving wrong way) veers to the right to avoid a crash with that trolley. • At 10:08, a woman enters the rear of a trolley from the middle of the street.

All of this activity was followed by the earthquake and fire on 18 April 1906. See the companion piece to this film (San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, April 18, 1906). A sobering thought: One wonders just how many of those folks on camera would be dead within a few days, as Market Street and environs were hit hard. Three thousand of the city's population did die, about a quarter of a million were left homeless, and 28,000 buildings were destroyed.

This short documentary has been shot weeks before the terrible quake! And after it, others shot the same path: you can find on the web edit movies with the 2 frames side by side to compare before / after the quake! they say they are synchronized but i doubt it: street lamps are after the quake! What is striking is that we barely see the Ferry building on the end of the street: dust, fog or bad quality, i can't say? Also after the quake, there is much more people outside on the street... But this trip movie has a lot of legends: shot 6 days before, Frisco was full of cars while i understand it was much earlier and in fact there is much less cars that it seems because the cars keep circling around the camera. At last, it's pity: i started my coast to cast american trip here but i don't think i did this travel because my cable car was in a downhill road while here it's completely flat...