This fascinating bit of film was shot from a San Francisco Market Street trolley car and it’s believed to have been taken just a few days before the 1906 earthquake.
Some comment from a local historian: This film was in a film museum and classified “1905 or 1906”, but recent research by experts concludes that it was probably made on Monday, April 16, 1906 or Tuesday, April 17! Clues to the date included the angle of shadows indicating the month, licenses visible on some of the vehicles, some of the automobiles shown, the movie that was showing on a theater that’s passed, and even some puddles seen in the street (it rained on the 16th).
Yep, a day or two before the great earthquake and fire - and this film had been immediately sent to New York by train for developing. Most everything seen in this film was destroyed less than a week later.
It’s interesting to watch the traffic and the chances people took when crossing the street. Street accidents were endemic throughout the U.S. as the country changed with the advent of the horseless carriage. The cable cars that are visible were running at a predictable 9.2 MPH. Horses moved slowly on city streets too. But the automobile could reach speeds of 20 MPH!
Early autos had the steering wheel on the right, then it was standardized to the left. The rules of the road were evolving. Major train crossings had crossing lights, but rural crossings were only marked with a sign and you were responsible for your own safety in crossing the tracks and looking for the train coming. Even signal lights in cities didn’t evolve until the 1920s. The cop directing traffic was about the only traffic control in use until then. As life sped up, we devised ways to protect the public, but it evolved slowly and unfortunately a lot of people died getting to where we have some civility on city streets.
The trolley in the video started about here (northbound Oxford & Berkeley), then made a right onto Hearst, and a left onto Euclid. The fire in 1923 destroyed a lot of the buildings shown in the video.
There certainly are a lot of people taking their lives into their hands crossing the street - and the little boys often seem to be crossing just for fun! It’s also interesting to see how many more pedestrians there were around - I guess that is because there were much fewer cars on the road. It just looks like absolute chaos!
Thanks for sharing that cool piece of film. Do you know any more about it? Why would something like that have been filmed and rush shipped to NYC? Some kind of tourist thing? It strikes me that a chunk of film that long could not have been cheap in those days.
It didn’t seem particularly disorderly to me. One of the automobiles did cut fairly close in front of the trolley, but everybody crossing the street was doing it safely.
Barcelona seems a lot more crowded and disorderly.
There is a weird sense of ordered chaos. Considering the intersection of four travel forms; Streetcar, Cars, Horse and buggy, and walking. Overall speeds are so low it seems like everybody expects things to just all work out. With the exception of a few surprised glances and springing out of the way, there is surprisingly little concern from anybody, and I really don’t see anything that looks like anger at being cut off. Also very little ‘looking both ways’ before crossing.
That is a damn wide road though, so I guess everybody just finds their own way.
Hehe, City planning meetings must have been so much more fun in the old days.
Planner: I would like to explain the concept of “eminent domain”, now this means…
Citizens: Git a rope.
Planner: Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Run away!
Thanks, though that’s cool. I was curious why, most other 18th century and before streets you see are tiny.(Well with the exception of the avenues where the kings liked to show off their shiny new soldiers and cannons.)
That doesn’t look that chaotic to me. Market St. is worse today, if only because the traffic lights are really confusing. If you haven’t experienced the joy, Market St. is where two different grid systems - that are at different angles to each other - come together, so the intersections are really oddly shaped. There are traffic lights pointing in all directions, and figuring out which one you’re supposed to be looking at can be really confusing - not to mention really dangerous.
Also, once when I was in college, a friend and I were stopped at a red light on Market St. when a guy stepped off the curb, started banging on the hood of her car, screaming “YOU FUCKING BITCH! FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING BITCH!” So that was surprising.
I have to admit that my idea of chaotic traffic has probably been permanently colored by the fact that I spent last summer in India. Now that is chaotic traffic.
