1906 Earthquake
At 5.12am on 18 April 1906 the San Andreas fault moved and the city fell over; then it burned for three days, because the water mains had broken with everything else. Around 3,000 people died and more than half the population was left homeless. The photographic record is extraordinary, including a film shot down Market Street days before, which turns out to be the last footage of a city that no longer existed by the end of that week.
Part of San Francisco
55 moments in this segment.
- - View of the conflagration from Telegraph Hill San Francisco. 3d, 1851/Map of the burnt district of San Francisco showing the extent of the fire.
- - Chinese Mission House of the M.E.. 916 Washington Street. First established in 1868 at 916 Washington as the "Methodist Mission" or "Oriental Home and School" by Otis T. Gibson. This building was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire and rebuilt at 940 Washington. The new building at 940 Washington was later
- - Map shading the district burnt in the great fire. A plan shading the blocks destroyed when fire swept the young city over two days in May, drawn for Hubert Howe Bancroft's History of California. Fires repeatedly levelled San Francisco's timber-built centre during its first years, and maps like this were used to record the extent of each loss.
- - Mission Dolores, reproduced from an old print. An illustration of Mission Dolores reproduced from an early print, scanned from Frank Aitken and Edward Hilton's account of the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906. The plate sits in the book's opening chapter on the old San Francisco that the disaster erased. The volume was published in the city by the E. Hilton Co. in the year of the quake.
- - Rows of refugee tents pitched at the Presidio after the earthquake. The army opened the Presidio's grounds to people burned out of the city, and camps of regulation tents were laid out in ordered streets to house them. Tens of thousands sheltered in such camps across San Francisco through 1906. The photograph is held by the National Archives.
- - Refugee tents at the Presidio after the earthquake. The Army opened the Presidio grounds to civilians burned out of the city in April 1906, laying out ordered rows of tents as emergency shelter. The photograph is held by the National Archives.
- - Refugee camp at the Presidio after the earthquake. Emergency shelter set up on Presidio ground for San Franciscans burned out by the April earthquake and fire. The military reservation became one of the city's largest relief sites, absorbing thousands who had lost their homes. The photograph is held by the U.S. National Archives.
- - Chinatown buildings in ruins after the earthquake. A Chicago Daily News photographer recorded the collapsed and burned-out blocks of San Francisco's Chinatown following the 1906 earthquake and fire. The district was among the hardest hit, and its destruction opened a fight over whether the Chinese community would be allowed to rebuild on the same ground.
- - Collapsed Chinatown buildings after the earthquake. Chinatown buildings standing in ruins after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the fires that followed. The photograph was made by an uncredited Chicago Daily News staff photographer and survives in the Library of Congress collection. The quarter was flattened almost completely, and its rebuilding was fought over by city officials who wanted the residents moved elsewhere.
- - San Francisco, April 18, 1906.. 1 slide: lantern; 4 x 5 in. or smaller.
- - Book illustration of the First Baptist Church of Oakland after the quake. An illustration from James Russel Wilson's 1906 volume on the San Francisco earthquake and fire, compiled from eyewitness accounts. The caption identifies the First Baptist Church of Oakland, across the bay, and presents the damaged building as evidence of the shock's reach. The scanned copy comes from the Library of Congress.
- - Rubble along Dupont Street in Chinatown. The main commercial street of Chinatown after the earthquake and fire, its buildings reduced to debris. Dupont Street was later renamed Grant Avenue. The print is attributed to Stoddard and held by the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University.
- - Salvaged goods pulled from the rubble of Chinatown. A gelatin silver print attributed to the photographer Stoddard, showing objects recovered from Chinatown after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Such pieces were sold and traded as "relics" to visitors in the months after the disaster, a small trade that grew up in the ruins. The print is held by the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University.
- - Burnt-out Chinatown with the Fairmont Hotel standing above it. Arnold Genthe photographed Chinatown after the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake, with the shell of the Fairmont Hotel visible on Nob Hill in the distance. Genthe had spent the previous decade photographing the neighbourhood before it burned, which makes his post-fire negatives a direct record of what was lost. Held by the Library of Congress.
- - On the ruins (April 1906), Chinatown, San Francisco LOC agc.7a55000. Title: On the ruins (April 1906), Chinatown, San Francisco Abstract/medium: Genthe, Arnold, 1869-1942, photographer. Physical description: 1 transparency:
- - On the ruins (April 1906), Chinatown, San Francisco LOC agc.7a08972. Title: On the ruins (April 1906), Chinatown, San Francisco Abstract/medium: Genthe, Arnold, 1869-1942, photographer. Physical description: 1 negative:
- - Chinatown photographed by Arnold Genthe on the morning of the earthquake. 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.
- - Genthe negative exposed in Chinatown on the day of the quake. Another of the frames Arnold Genthe exposed on the day of the earthquake, catalogued by the Library of Congress with his other Chinatown pictures from that date. Genthe photographed with a borrowed camera after his own equipment was lost, working through streets that were being consumed by fire. The negative survives in the Genthe Collection.
- - Chinatown on the morning of the earthquake. Arnold Genthe photographed the city on 18 April 1906, the day the earthquake struck and the fires began. Having documented Chinatown for a decade, he recorded the quarter as it was being destroyed. The negative is in the Library of Congress.
- - Genthe's negative exposed on the day the earthquake struck. A negative Genthe made on 18 April 1906, the morning of the earthquake, held with the rest of his collection at the Library of Congress. It is grouped with his Chinatown and earthquake photographs. The catalogue confirms the exact date but records nothing about the subject in the frame.
- - Chinatown streets after the earthquake, photographed by Arnold Genthe. Arnold Genthe photographed the city on the morning of April 18, 1906, working through the district he had spent a decade documenting. This negative belongs to the group covering the earthquake's effect on Chinatown. It is held in the Genthe Collection at the Library of Congress.
- - Arnold Genthe's view of Chinatown on the morning of the earthquake. Genthe photographed the city on 18 April 1906, the day the earthquake struck and the fires began. He had spent years documenting Chinatown before the disaster, and the quarter he had recorded was destroyed within days of this negative being exposed.
- - Arnold Genthe's view of the city on earthquake day. Arnold Genthe photographed San Francisco on 18 April 1906, the morning the earthquake struck and the fires began. Genthe was already known for years of street photography in Chinatown, and his earthquake images became among the most reproduced records of the disaster. The transparency is held by the Library of Congress.
- - Genthe transparency made in Chinatown as the city burned. One of Arnold Genthe's exposures from 18 April 1906, catalogued by the Library of Congress among his photographs of the earthquake in Chinatown. Genthe's own studio and negative files were destroyed in the fire, so the surviving images are the remnant of a much larger body of work. This example is held as a colour transparency rather than a negative.
- - Chinatown after San Francisco Earthquake 1906. There are bed frames and some columns of bricks standing on the left and right of the photograph amidst debris and rubble from crumbled homes. There is a large, destroyed building on the right.
- - Our San Francisco (1906 earthquake) 1. A photograph of the destruction caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, for the article "Our San Francisco," by James Hopper in Everybody's Magazine, June 1906 (3 months after the fire). The article was an eyewitness report of the earthquake by the author who was working for the Call and staying in t
- - Our San Francisco (1906 earthquake) 2. A photograph of the destruction caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, for the article "Our San Francisco," by James Hopper in Everybody's Magazine, June 1906 (3 months after the fire). The article was an eyewitness report of the earthquake by the author who was working for the Call and staying in t
- - Our San Francisco (1906 earthquake) 3. A photograph of the destruction caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, for the article "Our San Francisco," by James Hopper in Everybody's Magazine, June 1906 (3 months after the fire). The article was an eyewitness report of the earthquake by the author who was working for the Call and staying in t
- - Illustration from a book on the earthquake and fire. A plate from "The History of the San Francisco Disaster and Mount Vesuvius Horror" by Charles Eugene Banks and Opie Read, rushed into print in 1906. Books of this kind paired the earthquake with the Vesuvius eruption of the same year and sold to a national audience within months. The Commons file is catalogued with the Chinese temples of Chinatown destroyed in the fire.
- - Chinese temple pictured in a book on the disaster. A plate from The History of the San Francisco Disaster and Mount Vesuvius Horror by Charles Eugene Banks and Opie Read, a popular volume rushed out in the year of the earthquake. The image belongs to the book's treatment of Chinatown, which the fire destroyed almost entirely.
- - Genthe's lantern slide of the city on earthquake morning. A slide from Arnold Genthe's photographs of San Francisco made on 18 April 1906, the day of the earthquake, filed with his Chinatown work at the Library of Congress. Genthe borrowed a camera after his own was lost and spent the day shooting in the streets as the fires spread. The slide itself was produced sometime between 1906 and his death in 1942.
- - Arnold Genthe's colour view of Chinatown on the day of the quake. Genthe, who had spent a decade photographing San Francisco's Chinatown, made this transparency on 18 April 1906, the morning the earthquake struck. His pictures from that day are among the few colour-process records of the disaster and are held in the Library of Congress.
- - Arnold Genthe's colour transparency of Chinatown on the day of the quake. Arnold Genthe photographed San Francisco on 18 April 1906, the morning the earthquake struck, and this transparency comes from that day's work in and around Chinatown. Genthe had spent a decade photographing the quarter before the fire destroyed it, and his earthquake pictures are among the few made by someone who already knew the streets intimately. The plate is held in the Genthe Collection at the Library of Congress.
- - Genthe transparency made on the morning of the quake. One of Genthe's frames made on 18 April 1906, filed with his photographs of Chinatown and the earthquake. Unusually for the set this survives as a transparency rather than a negative. The Library of Congress catalogue records the date and the photographer but does not describe the view itself.
- - Genthe's transparency of Chinatown on the day of the quake. A colour transparency from Arnold Genthe's record of April 18, 1906, filed among his images of the earthquake in Chinatown. Genthe had photographed the quarter since 1896 and lost his own studio in the fire that followed. The Library of Congress holds the plate in its Genthe Collection.
- - Second Genthe view of the ruined Chinatown district. A companion transparency from the same Genthe group in the Library of Congress, filed under the earthquake in Chinatown and carrying the same date of 18 April 1906. The catalogue supplies no description of what is pictured beyond the collection it belongs to.
- - A second Genthe transparency made on the day of the earthquake. Another of the frames Arnold Genthe exposed on 18 April 1906, catalogued alongside his Chinatown and earthquake photographs at the Library of Congress. Like its companion it survives as a transparency. The archive record gives the photographer and the date but no description of what is in the frame.
- - Genthe colour transparency of Chinatown after the quake. One of Arnold Genthe's images of the Chinatown district following the earthquake, dated by the Library of Congress to 18 April 1906. The catalogue record identifies the medium and the photographer but does not describe the scene or name a street.
- - Illustrated view along Market Street from an earthquake book. A plate from James Russel Wilson's 1906 volume on the San Francisco earthquake and fire, compiled from accounts by eyewitnesses and padded out with chapters on Vesuvius and other volcanoes. The scanned page is captioned as a view on Market Street, the city's main thoroughfare.
- - Rare footage of San Francisco after 1906 earthquake shown in Fremont. A lost piece of Bay Area history unearthed at a flea market was shown for the first time Saturday night to the public.
- - How San Francisco Was Devastated By The 1906 Earthquake. On April 18, 1906, San Francisco experienced a magnitude 7.9 earthquake. The quake and the fires it caused destroyed a large portion of the city by the bay. #foxweather #weather Download the FOX Weather app: FOX Weather is a 24/7 ad-supported streaming service opera
- - San Francisco Earthquake 1906 - Before and After Journey Down Market Str. Please Retweet: Here is a side-by-side comparison of two filmed journeys down Market Street shot in April of 1906 sourced from the Prelinger Archives at The video on the left has enjoyed wide circulation online, but has often been incorrectly da
- - 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Footage of Aftermath. Footage takin in 1906 of the aftermath of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire that year.
- - San Francisco 1906 (New Version) in Color [VFX,60fps, Remastered] w/soun. I colorized, restored and I added a sky visual effect and created a sound design for this video of San Francisco 1906, A Trip Down Market Street, Shot on April 14, 1906, four days before the San Francisco earthquake and fire. From the front of a cable car, a motion picture camera records a trip dow
- - (1080p, 60fps Colorized) 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Aftermath. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). High-intensity shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultu
- - San Francisco After the 1906 Earthquake. Full video from the Long Now Foundation available at: Archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger shows archival footage of downtown San Francisco after the devastating 1906 earthquake and resulting fire.
- - San Francisco Earthquake - Amazing 1906 Film Restored to Life. 120 year old film meticulously colorized at 4K 60fps with added sound. This is a verified historical restoration of the iconic "A Trip Down Market Street," filmed just four days before the disaster, plus rare footage of the immediate aftermath. Using manual frame-by-frame colorization and immersive
- - A Trip Down Market Street, 1906 - With Sound!. UPDATE! NEW HIGH-RES 4K SCAN OF HISTORIC MARKET STREET VIDEO, GO HERE: Historic pre-earthquake San Francisco, 1906, with full sound design. Background: This film was shot on April 14, 1906, just four days before the San Francisco earthquake and fire, to which the neg
- - San Francisco Market St 1906 Streetcar Video.flv. Very cool video from 1906 streetcar down Market Street...just 4 days before the 1906 earthquake.
- - San Francisco 1905: Scenes from a streetcar on Market Street. San Francisco 1905: Scenes from a streetcar traveling down Market Street The 1906 earthquake destroyed this entire area.
- - San Francisco Dashcam A Trip Down Market Street 1906 (Sound Track - Moon. San Francisco's main thoroughfare, Market Street, is a hive of activity in this 1906 "dashcam" style movie. The trip was filmed from the front of a cable car, and shows horse drawn and motorized traffic weaving between the cable cars & horse drawn trams, often narrowly missing pedestrians by just in
- - A Trip Down Market Street, San Francisco, April 14, 1906 [4K Scan]. "A Trip Down Market Street" - Miles Brothers (Prelinger Archives). Based on a 4K scan which was delivered in 24p. The source was restored to the original 16p framerate followed by stabilization, then several adjustments and cleanups were processed and then rendered as 60p using an AAA,BBBB,CCCC,DDD
- - San Francisco Street Car circa 1906-part1.avi. This 1906 video was taken from a camera mounted on a street car on Market Street in San Francisco, circa 1906 before the earthquake and great fire. This 13 plus minute video has been split into two parts to meet YouTube 10 minute limit. Enjoy part 1. The film rolls up and down some but settled do
- - The William Crocker mansion on Nob Hill before it burned. The house stood at 1170 California Street, part of the row of railroad and banking fortunes that built palaces on Nob Hill in the decades after the Gold Rush. It was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and the fire that followed, along with almost every other mansion on the hill. The photographer is unknown.
- - Lawrence Lipton and DUHAB. Author Lawrence Lipton, chronicler of the beatnik scene, demonstrates his "robot," DUHAB (detector of undesirable habitues). Lipton says robot ferrets out the undesirables-including censors, book-burners
