An ordinary day in San Francisco in 1956


When I saw this image of San Francisco in 1956, on the Duke University site, of Portal Avenue looking east towards 15th, I was struck by how wonderfully ordinary everything looked. And after looking at the Google Street View I was pleased to see how wonderfully ordinary it still looks.

Like most people who have never lived in the City by the Bay, my view of it is very narrow. Let's see, there are those little cable cars climbing halfway to stars, the Golden Gate Bridge, Haight-Ashbury, Victorian mansions in rows, that sort of thing. Oh yeah, and that very steep switchback road (I forget the name, but you know the one I mean).

There was a California feel to this image, but not Los Angeles, so when my number one history adventuring researcher (who prefers to remain anonymous) thought that it was Oakland, I agreed. When he got the exact address, however, I was surprised to find that it was in San Francisco. For those of you who are familiar with the area, this is just east of the 1, and north of Sloat Boulevard.


Those taller buildings are still there, still looking about the same, and the buildings in the foreground, although modernized, are similar. The cars driving on the trolley tracks caught my eye, so I checked to see if the tracks are still there, which they are. And cars still drive on them. Back in the day you just watched where you were going, and it looks like it's still true.


I can't quite read what it says over the awnings on the left, but my best guess is that it was a restaurant. There's a dry cleaners, and plenty of real estate being sold. That's always been true in the Bay Area! By the way, there's Allan F. Mori's place, which was at 360 W. Portal Avenue.


I just love the classic fifties cars, which of course would have been so ordinary at the time that no one would have really even looked at them. Me, I'd be walking around admiring the chrome!


I just love looking at the Duke images, which capture ordinary life because all that the photos were taken for was to record the billboards. Advertising, like real estate, has always been big business! The 1st choice choice for sandwiches, Kilpatrick's bread!


Thank you for spending an ordinary day with me in San Francisco in 1956!




If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more