San Francisco's Alcatraz Island, famous for the Alacatraz Federal Penitentiary that housed notorious criminals from 1934-1963, can be just be seen in front of Angel Island.
Taylor Street leads us toward Fisherman's Wharf and the Bay.
San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, a neighborhood which received its name from the Italian fishermen who immigrated during the gold rush era, can be seen.
Washington Square was established in 1847 and was one of San Francisco's first parks. During the devastating earthquake and subsequent fire of 1906, hundreds of citizens took refuge in Army tents here, as it was one of the few locations that remained unharmed.
Telegraph Hill Observatory (also known as Layman's Wooden Castle, Layman's Folly, or Julius' Castle) was built in 1882 by developer Frederick Layman on the crest of Telegraph Hill.
In 1876, George Hearst purchased and named the five-acres at the summit of Telegraph Hill, and christened it "Pioneer Park," in an effort to conserve San Francisco's beautiful hill-top views for public use.
Yerba Buena Island (also known as Goat Island at that t.mes ) is bare—the saplings planted by school children on the first California Arbor Day in 1885 would not be visible until the 1890s.
Berkeley can be seen across the Bay. The city was named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley by the founders of the College of California (the privately-owned precursor to the University of California) in 1866.
The Saint Francis of Assisi Church was built in 1860 following the initial establishment of the St. Francis Church in 1851, the first Catholic church in California at the t.mes . The church, with its arched windows and rectangular towers, is still maintained at 610 Vallejo Street today.
The street running down the center of this photograph is Vallejo Street, named after Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo—a Spanish-American General who was an influential force in transitioning California from a Mexican territory to a member of the United States.
William Henry Jackson photographed this panoramic view from a hill-top known today as Ina Coolbrith Park, in the Russian Hill-Vallejo Street Crest Historic District.
The Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe was originally constructed between 1875-80 and destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. This photograph shows the original building, built by Spanish Franciscan missionaries with ornate dome-shaped towers akin to Spanish Colonial Revival churches built in the early 20th century.
Portsmouth Square sits to the north of St. Mary's Cathedral and was the earliest location for public gathering in San Francisco. It was originally used by Mexican settlers and was established as an official plaza by California in 1835. The square lies at the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown.
Old St. Mary's Cathedral was built in 1853 and can be recognized by its distinctive roof-top crosses, making it an easy architectural landmark to spot in San Francisco's Historic Chinatown.
San Francisco's Financial District is visible here, but it does not yet show the Chronicle Building, which would be built in 1890 and become the first skyscraper in the city. From that point on, steel construction would begin to transform the San Francisco skyline.
Charles Crocker was the fourth member of the "Big Four" railroad tycoons who funded the Central Pacific Railroad and was responsible for California's economic growth in the 19th century. Here in Nob Hill, Crocker built his mansion at 1100 California Street. It was later destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and replaced with the Grace Cathedral, which that sits here today.
In this stunning view from Russian Hill, plumes of smoke can be spotted drifting across the city. Here you can see the cable car barn pouring out smoke. In the late 19th century, San Francisco was largely powered by soft coal from nearby Mt. Diablo, but period photographs rarely reflect this aspect of everyday life.
Leland Stanford was the first to build his mansion in Nob Hill on California Street in 1876. He also established the California Street Cable Railroad, providing transportation up the thoroughfare, which is the oldest cable car line still operating in San Francisco. Stanford's mansion burnt down to its foundation in the 1906 fire and has been rebuilt since.
Mark Hopkins (one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad) followed Stanford, and his mansion was completed in 1878 after his death. In 1878, this building was the highest point in San Francisco. It was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, but has since been rebuilt.
American silver tycoon James C. Flood built his mansion in Nob Hill in 1886. The neighborhood was an affluent enclave, home to several prominent mansions prior to the 1906 earthquake.
Magnificent in scale and scope, a unique view of a vanished San Francisco by William Henry Jackson, a giant in photography of the American West.
Extending to six and one-half feet in length—making it Jackson's largest known albumen panorama—the present work offers a spectacular scene, and represents a technical feat.
A major innovation in panoramic photography. Prior to the invention of photographic enlargers, the technology for producing large photographic prints was limited to utilizing mammoth plates (typically 18 x 22 inches, though somet.mes s larger). Jackson and other post-Civil War landscape photographers, seeking to capture the greatest possible level of detail in their photographs, relied on these plates. Panoramas were, in turn, made by mounting a series of individual prints side-by-side, but the joining of these prints often created unsightly, stained seams that detracted from their visual impact. As early as 1876 Jackson had dreamt of the possibility of creating seamless panoramas, but it wasn't until the late 1880s that he devised an innovative technique, involving a printing frame incorporating albumen paper on rollers. His invention at last allowed the creation of seamless albumen prints at sizes previously impossible to render.
This spectacular San Francisco panorama presents the view from Russian Hill, looking east towards Berkeley, down Vallejo Street past St. Francis of Assisi. The towered Mark Hopkins mansion (1878) and the James Flood mansion (1886) to its right are both visible on Nob Hill. In the distance, Yerba Buena Island (also known as Goat Island at that t.mes ) is bare—the saplings planted by school children on the first California Arbor Day in 1885 would not be visible until the 1890s. Russian Hill, one of the city's original "Seven Hills," still provides astonishing vistas of the city and the Bay today, and is known for a famous section of Lombard Street which features eight sharp switchbacks.
This striking view shows plumes of smoke drifting across the city. The building producing smoke in the foreground is the cable car barn. At the t.mes , San Francisco was largely powered by soft coal from nearby Mt. Diablo, but period photographs rarely reflect this aspect of everyday life.
Soon after Jackson made this monumental panorama in 1888, San Francisco's landscape would soon be forever altered, two t.mes s over. The Financial District seen at the right of the photograph, does not yet show the Chronicle Building, which would be built in 1890 and become the first skyscraper in the city. From that point on, steel construction would begin to transform the San Francisco skyline. Then, sixteen years later, the 1906 earthquake and the ensuing fire would again change the landscape, as it destroyed more than 80% of the city, leveling 25,000 buildings on 490 city blocks.
A giant of western photography, William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) was one of the pioneering photographers of the American West. He began his career in Omaha, Nebraska in 1867, where he established his reputation as a photographer for government surveys, documenting the construction of the railroads and the growth of new towns. In 1879 he opened his studio in Denver, Colorado, and there he created “a record of Western reporting that no man has equaled” (American Album). Jackson created the present photograph when he travelled to California for the first t.mes in 1888. He “continues to be one of the most studied and written about American 19th century photographers” (Harrell).
This is the only known example of this important photograph. Consultations with the leading California institutions and the Jackson archival collects ions in Colorado and at the Library of Congress, as well as research in the standard auction records, show this to be the sole copy extant. This work belonged to Isabelle Haynes, daughter-in-law of Yellowstone photographer F. J. Haynes. F. J. Haynes purchased many of Jackson’s earliest Denver-era photographs when the Detroit Photographic Company, which Jackson had joined in 1897, declared bankruptcy in 1923. This massive residual archive remained in private hands until it was acquired en bloc by a consortium of dealers around 1990.
A unique and spectacular view of San Francisco. Not only a significant depiction of the city—capturing it on the precipice of a rapid transformation which would only accelerate through the twentieth century—the work itself represents a milestone in the technology of photography itself, by one of the greatest American photographers. The late nineteenth century gave rise to early artistic explorations of the photographic medium, often crossing documentarian and aesthetic purposes (see lots 1023, 1029, 1033 and 1042), of which this is a truly magnificent example.
REFERENCE:
Nagel, John W. “William Henry Jackson Panorama Photography—A Little Known Technique of the 19th Century,” Enlighten: The IPHF Journal, Autumn 2013
PROVENANCE:
Isabelle Haynes