This isn’t new, but if you haven’t seen these wonderful composite photographs by San Francisco photographer Sean Clover, you’re in for a treat.
These are just a couple of them, comparing the damage caused by the 1906 earthquake and fire with the exact same location today.
Above, the gate of the cable car barn on Washington Street just east of Mason, showing how Car 155 was crushed by falling bricks. Within a few hours of the original photograph, it and all its mates from the Powell Street cable lines would be incinerated. (They were replaced by cable cars used on the Sacramento-Clay lines, stored out of the fire zone. Some of these cars, much rebuilt, are still on the Powell lines today.)
Below, two of the California Street cable cars of the type built in 1907 to replace the ones destroyed in the earthquake pass between Grant Avenue and Stockton Street, with 1906 rubble from Nob Hill to the right.
We’re lucky to live in a city with artists as talented as Sean Clover.
Amazing! We have photographers here in the LA area who do “Then and Now” studies, but seeing contemporary people seemingly walking on 1906 rubble, or a small Toyota about to run into twisted streetcar rails takes it to the next level.