I walked through the Richmond District of San Francisco with the intention of putting together a small gallery of ‘Then and Now’ photographs of the district. Here are the results. The photographs are shown in the order in which I walked through The Richmond. A map of the route is shown below.
Click on an image to view the full-size photograph.
NOW This is St. Ignatius Church; it is located on Parker Avenue at the intersection of Shrader Street. This is a picture of the church one hundred and three years after it opened.
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| THEN This is a view of St. Ignatius Church under construction. The picture is circa 1910. The church opened on 2 August 1914. (Courtesy of California Province of the Society of Jesus Archives, Los Gatos, California.) |
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| THEN This picture was taken in 1938. The streetcar is on the No. 21 line which ran along Fulton Street. Fulton Street is contiguous with the northern boundary of Golden Gate Park. A Safeway market is visible on the northwest corner of Fulton Street and Fifth Avenue. (Courtesy of Jack Tillmany.) |
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| NOW The streetcar line is now history, as is the Safeway market. A four-story residential building now occupies the site of Safeway. All of the other buildings are still located on Fulton Street. |
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| THEN Fernando Nelson, along with his four sons, was a major San Francisco homebuilder in the early Twentieth Century. This photograph of some of the houses that he constructed was taken in 1938 on Third Avenue. The view is looking east. (Courtesy of Julie Norris O'Keefe.) |
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| NOW This is a view of the houses as seen in 2017. The location is Third Avenue between Cabrillo Street and Balboa Street. |
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THEN Pope John Paul II visited San Francisco in 1987. This is a picture of the Pope traveling east on Geary Boulevard near Third Avenue. (Courtesy of Mark Adams.)
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NOW This is a view of the location in 2017; the view is looking north.
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| THEN The German Savings and Loan Society was the first bank to put a branch in the Richmond District. The bank opened this branch on 27 December 1914. (Courtesy of John Freeman.) |
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| NOW Tat Wong Kung Fu has three locations in the San Francisco Bay Area This location is at 601 Clement Street at Seventh Avenue. Please note that the building's owner increased the length of the building sometime in the past. The view is looking southwest. |
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| THEN This photo was taken on Clement Street in 1905; the view is looking east. There is a streetcar rounding the corner at Sixth Avenue, and some horse-drawn wagons are waiting on the north side of Clement Street. (Courtesy of John Freeman.) |
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| NOW This is the same view in 2017. All of the buildings are original, but they have all had significant alterations in the past one hundred and twelve years. Green Apple Books is visible in this picture. |
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| THEN This is a view of Clement Street at Ninth Avenue; the scene is looking east. The Coliseum Theater is on the right. The theater opened on 22 November 1918 and closed seventy-two years later, on 17 October 1989. This photo was taken in 1944. (Courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.) |
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| NOW In 2000, the theater building was gutted, and it was transformed into fourteen residential condominium apartments along with a Walgreen's drugstore at street level. |
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| THEN The Alexandria Theatre opened in 1923; this photo was taken in 1944. The theatre closed in 2004. (Courtesy of Jack Tillmany.) |
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| NOW Major construction work is occurring at the theatre site. This photo was taken on Geary Boulevard at Nineteenth Avenue; the view is looking east. |
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| THEN Dick's Saloon & Restaurant was located at the northwest corner of Forty-third Avenue and Point Lobos Road. The photograph was taken in 1903, and the location of the saloon is only a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean and the Cliff House. (Courtesy of a private collector.) |
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| NOW The saloon is long gone; the site is now occupied by a four-unit residential building. The former location of the Fort Miley Military Reservation is one block north of this locale. |
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| THEN The Balboa Theatre opened on 27 February 1926; this photo was taken in 1968. The theatre has an interesting history. (Photograph by Tom Grey; courtesy of Jack Tillmany.) |
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| THEN This hotel, located on Fulton Street at the intersection of Thirty-sixth Avenue, opened in 1907. The building is located across the street from Golden Gate Park and about one mile from Ocean Beach and the Pacific Ocean. The building functioned as a hotel until 1920, at which time it began to be used as a sanitarium. The building was converted for use as an apartment building in 1932, which continues to the present day. (Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.) |
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| NOW It cost $50,000 to construct this building in 1907. The structure has been nicely maintained over the past 110 years. This view is looking northwest. |
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| The distance traveled was approximately 8.1 miles (13.0 kilometers). The cumulative elevation gain was about 580 feet (177 meters). Mile markers are displayed on the GPS generated track. Click on the image to see the full-size map. |
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"A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.” Dorothea Lange
"Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important." Henri Carter-Bresson
"There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer." Ansel Adams
The first volume of the San Francisco Bay Area Photo Blog contains galleries of photographs that were posted on the Internet between 2002 and 2011. Click Here to view these photo galleries.
