A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire

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...

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...

The movie is twelve minutes long and it's made by the Miles Brothers, a pioneer film company that made some thirty movies between 1903 - 1907.

This movie is their best known, and for good: it's a little gem. They installed their camera on a cable car that operated on Market Street, the Fifth Avenue of San Francisco (or their Champs Élysées, if you prefer). And so, set on the car, the camera filmed the view of the street, as they were slowly going down to the Ferry Building.

Watching this movie is like traveling on a time capsule that brings us in a jiffy over hundred years ago. The impression is incredible, we fall under a charm. It is the Market Street in San Francisco, everything is there in place, something doesn't fit. There is much less traffic, but it's so chaotic! Cable cars coming from the other side, buggies, carts with their horses, some kind of trolley buses crossing the street every now and then, cars, bicycles, and above all pedestrians, circulating in all directions, crossing the street just in front of the vehicles, running in front of the street car having the camera and shaking their hands with a big smile, just to be caught in the movie, to remain on the screen for eternity. It's a formidable impression of chaos, of joy, of nice irresponsibility, it's La Belle Époque American style. Or rather it's the beginning of big urban life, that particular moment when people just enjoy the novelties: the big city, the industrialization, the cars, the filming. This moment can actually take a couple of years, then the reality becomes the king. But that moment is wonderful. It's a moment of enthusiasm, it is superbly caught by this movie. Watching it calls in mind the mastership of Dziga Vertov, The Man with a Camera. The movie of the Miles Brothers is a lesson of sociology.

The movie was long considered to have been made in September 1905. Actually it was made in the spring of 2006, just days before the big earthquake and fire that hit San Francisco, and many of the enthusiast people appearing in the movie would die very soon after the filming.

It happened that the movie was sent by train to New York in the night before the earthquake. The following day the studio of Miles Brothers was destroyed by the cataclysm.

And the name this movie remained known as A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire.

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.

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.