Looking east toward Ninth Avenue in 1910, Irving Street was lined with private residences and a few scattered shops. Beyond this burgeoning corridor you can see the Affiliated Colleges peeking out from the forested peaks of Mt. Sutro. That is UCSF’s Parnassus Campus today.
This glass negative shows a slice of life at the Lands End Station near Mile Rock in 1906. People waiting for a United Railroads streetcar along this electrified Cliff Line could take in the view from benches along its perimeter, or escape the unpredictable weather and grab a snack from the waiting room inside.
This peaceful scene in 1900 shows what today is the busy intersection of 19th Avenue and Moraga Street, looking north toward Golden Gate Park in the distance.
As rationing began during World War II in 1943, the line for Denhard’s Market at 701 10th Ave. near Cabrillo stretched down the block.
This view, looking north at 19th Avenue and Lincoln Way, shows the Breon Gate entrance to Golden Gate Park in its original form, around 1930.
A main attraction of the Richmond District since it opened in 1896, the Sutro Baths was already in decline when this Kodachrome slide was taken circa 1957.
A packed parking lot along the Great Highway in front of the Cabrillo Street entrance to Chutes at the Beach, circa 1932. This was the main gate to an amusement area that became known as Playland at the Beach, where visitors could get sweet waffles (a favorite treat) before enjoying popular attractions such as the Aeroplane Swing and Ferris wheel, visible in the distance.
… passing by the Dutch Windmill and the sloop Gjoa on the western edge of Golden Gate Park. Famed explorer Roald Amundsen sailed the Gjoa through the Northwest Passage, reaching Alaska in 1905 and bringing her to dock in San Francisco in October 1906.
When this photograph, looking southeast towards Lone Mountain from Ninth Avenue near Geary Boulevard, was taken around 1890, the Star of the Sea Church, built in 1888, was still a new addition to the neighborhood. Visible in the distance is the Bay District Racetrack, Golden Gate Park and Mt. Sutra.
The photo, circa 1905, above shows a three-story home made from old horsecars on La Playa, between Irving and Judah streets, in a bohemian enclave known as Carville at Ocean Beach.
The shipwrecked lumber schooner “Reporter” ran aground on Ocean Beach near what is now Noriega Street on March 13, 1902.
The construction to prepare for the laying of sewer pipes on Vicente Street, near 39th Avenue, was documented by SF Department of Public Works’ (DPW) staff photographer Horace Chaffee on July 23, 1909. Chaffee covered numerous infrastructure projects spearheaded by DPW from the 1910s through the 1930s and captured the modernizing of San Francisco in the process. Photo courtesy of a private collector/Western Neighborhoods Project.
A woman wearing Victorian-era clothing walks in front of the “Carzonia Apartments” at Fourth Avenue and Cornwall Street in the Inner Richmond, circa 1908. Mimicking Carville in the Outer Sunset, Dr. Charles V. Cross placed 10 surplus McAllister-line cable cars on a narrow strip of his land between California and Cornwall streets to address housing needs after the 1906 earthquake and fire.
A crowd of onlookers gathers atop a Sunset District sand dune to watch the launch of McGill Glider No. 813N, by the Pacific Glider School at 33rd Avenue and Kirkham Street, on May 24, 1930.
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 