1. Gold rush abandoned ships



1849: Vessels lie abandoned in San Francisco Bay. Whole crews discarded their ships for the gold fields. They were eventually salvaged for their wood and furnishings.

Seen from the south end of Yerba Buena Cove toward Telegraph Hill, this is one of the oldest known photographs of San Francisco. From the Gold Rush in 1849 onwards, the cove was filled in and downtown San Francisco was built on top.

2. Clay Hill cable car

August 1873: Inventor Andrew Hallidie (1836-1900) tests the first cable car system near the top of Nob Hill at Clay and Jones streets. Hallidie is standing at the controls with a beard and moustache.

3. Cupertino

May 1889: View of the foothills from the porch roof of Captain Joseph C Merithew’s ranch, now De Anza College, looking south-west over McClellan Road. In 1976 Apple opened its first office in the city, and in 2016 a new 2.8m square-foot complex designed by Sir Norman Foster will consolidate Apple headquarters into one giant glass ring.

4. The 1906 earthquake

April 1906: Arnold Genthe’s photographic equipment was destroyed by the major San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Undeterred, he went to his dealer, borrowed a 3A Kodak Special and documented the fire and aftermath. This photograph is from Sacramento Street at Miles Place (now Miller Place) near Powell Street.

5. Ferry Building

1906: Unlike many other historic buildings in the city, the Ferry Building survived the 1906 earthquake and fire with little damage.

6. Lombard Street

1922: Lombard Street during the construction of the famous escalating road, which has been called “the crookedest street in the world”.

7. Golden Gate Bridge

1937: Fishermen on Baker Beach enjoy the view of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction.

8. Second World War

December 1941: As a protection against possible Japanese air raids, sandbags are piled against the Home Telephone Company building.

9. Internment of Japanese Americans

March 1942: Tatsuro Masuda, the owner of the Wanto Co grocery store, put up this sign following Japan’s sudden attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. President Franklin D Roosevelt had ordered the incarceration of at least 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in camps across the US.

10. Twitter building

June 1945: The lobby of the Western Furniture Exchange and Merchandise Mart with a mural representing early furniture craftsmanship. Twitter moved into the building in 2012.

11. Early Silicon Valley

May 1953: Groundbreaking for Kodak Processing Laboratory on Page Mill Road, now the location for the offices of Foley & Lardner LLP. Eastman Kodak (commonly known as Kodak) was the second tenant at the Stanford Industrial Park (now the Stanford Research Park); its managers wanted to bring light technology-focused industry onto Stanford University-land. The technology-based companies expanded into the surrounding town and cities, which is now termed Silicon Valley.

12. Haight-Ashbury

1967: A young couple stand on the sidewalk by the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets during the ‘Summer of Love’.

13. Anti-Vietnam protest

October 1967: The largest anti-Vietnam War protest in the San Francisco Bay Area took place in downtown Oakland. The protesters proclaimed it ‘Stop the Draft Week’ and blockaded the Oakland Induction Center, where army recruits would arrive. Mace was used for the first time, along with police batons, to lift the siege.

14. Occupation of Alcatraz

November 1969: Native Americans play ball games outside the prison walls during their occupation of Alcatraz island. The Alcatraz penitentiary closed in March 1963 and several activists from the Red Power movement claimed the island qualified for reclamation to the Native American people under the Treaty of Fort Laramie.

15. Black Panthers

April 1969: While a shotgun-armed policeman checks a bar, a young boy with a baseball bat decides it’s time to leave during a disturbance in the Fillmore district where police arrested several members of the Black Panthers. The Black Panther Party was founded in Oakland to challenge police brutality.

16. Gentrification

1979: Langton between Folsom and Harrison streets. When Janet Delaney photographed South of Market in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the area attracted the working class, immigrants, artists and a burgeoning gay community, but was being primed for redevelopment and gentrification.

17. Castro Street Fair

August 1980: Two men kiss at the Castro Street Fair. The area was one of the first openly gay neighborhoods in the US and remains a significant community for LGBT events and activism.

18. Embarcadero freeway

1981: Lathe Tool Works, 37 Clementina Street. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the elevated double-decker freeway forcing its closure and demolition.

19. Googleplex, Mountain View

March, 1983: View northwards, from Charleston Road, of the farm and dump that covered much of the area near Mountain View’s shoreline. The land was developed in 1994 and was initially the location for the headquarters of Silicon Graphics. Since 2003 the complex has been leased by Google, which now falls under the tech conglomerate Alphabet.

Credits

Photographer: David Levene

Picture editor and researcher: Jim Powell



Assistant researcher: Parker Yesko



Design and development: Daan Louter



Archive photography: 1. CSU Archives/Everett Collection/Alamy; 2. Corbis; 3. California History Center/De Anza College; 4. Arnold Genthe/Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images; 5. Library of Congress; 6. San Francisco History Center/San Francisco Public Library; 7. Underwood Archives/Getty Images; 8. Jack Rice/AP; 9. Dorothea Lange/Library of Congress; 10. Moulin Studios/San Francisco Public Library; 11. Stanford Historical Photograph Collection/Stanford University Library; 12. Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images; 13. William James Warren/Science Faction/Corbis; 14/15. AP; 16. Janet Delaney; 17. Paul Fusco/Magnum Photos; 18. Janet Delaney; 19. City of Mountain View.

Thanks to LUMINA for assistance with the gold rush photograph.