Oakland-Bay-Brücke in San Francisco.

Description

The photograph is oriented towards the west, taken from Yerba Buena Island and looking out over the western portion of the bridge, with downtown San Francisco in the background.

This work is undated, but from context – most importantly the two-way traffic on the upper level of the bridge – can be assumed to be from the early-mid 1950s. Initially, both interurban electric trains (of the Western Pacific and Southern Pacific) and streetcars (of the Key System) utilized the lower level, along with buses and trucks. By 1958, both rail and streetcar service had ended, but the lower deck continued to be used exclusively for trucks and buses until 1963.

Unlike the eastern portion of the bridge, which was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and later rebuilt in a different style, this western portion of the bridge appears the same today as in this photograph.

The entities involved in the production of this work all appear to have been short-lived. There is no evidence of Foto Moulin Studio having published any other works. Westermann Wandbilder produced a handful of similar vibrantly-colored large format photographic prints around this time, and appears to have been a branch of the well-established atlas and educational publisher Westermann Verlag in Braunschweig. Geographische Typenlandschaften looks to have worked exclusively with Westermann Wandbilder and may have been another branch of the Westermann group of companies.