Bird’s-eye-view of ruins of San Francisco from captive airship, 600 feet above Folsom between Fifth and Sixth Sts.

Description

This stunning 1906 photograph, taken by famed aerial panoramic photographer George R. Lawrence, captures the devastation of San Francisco caused by the earthquake and fire of April 18.

The view is oriented towards the northwest. As the caption indicates, it was taken from a balloon flying above Folsom St., between 5th and 6th Sts. in the SOMA (South of Market) neighborhood. Faint red ink labels some buildings and streets, but even at a glance some structures are readily recognizable. To the left is the burned-out shell of City Hall, close to but not exactly at the location of the building that replaced it in Civic Center. At right is the San Francisco Call Building near Union Square, the city’s tallest building, which was badly damaged but not destroyed in the fire.

Other notable buildings that survived the fire can be spotted, including the San Francisco Mint (now the ‘Old San Francisco Mint’) in the foreground at center and the Fairmount Hotel on Nob Hill in the background towards the right. Not far from the Mint is the triangular Phelan Building, which resembles the taller Flatiron Building in New York. The latter did not collapse but was so badly damaged that it was demolished and rebuilt.

Census and publication information

This photograph was taken by George R. Lawrence some time in the weeks following the fire, before significant cleanup and reconstruction work had begun. In order to capture the image, Lawrence employed a variety of novel methods, including stabilizing the camera by attaching it to long bamboo poles that were weighted over the sides of the balloon basket to prevent any movement from the wind. He also created a special modified shutter to expose the more distant parts of the city at top for much longer than the area in the foreground, achieving a consistently high level of clarity throughout. A handwritten annotation marks the 19th anniversary of the fire, presumably added by the photograph’s original owner.

This photograph is quite rare, only being noted in the OCLC among the holdings of the Library of Congress and the University of California Berkeley.