Chinatown photographed by Arnold Genthe on the morning of the earthquake

1906

Arnold Genthe made this negative on 18 April 1906, the day the earthquake struck San Francisco. He had spent the previous decade photographing Chinatown and returned to the same quarter as it burned, producing one of the few first-hand photographic records of the disaster's opening hours. Held by the Library of Congress in the Genthe Collection.