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Frederick Eugene Ives / AP
This Oct. 6, 1906 stereo photograph provided by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History shows view of earthquake-damaged San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the six images were snapped by color photography pioneer Frederick Eugene Ives several months after the April 1906 "Great Quake." National Museum of American History volunteer Anthony Brooks found the glass plate photos while cataloguing a collection donated by Ives' son, Herbert.
Frederick Eugene Ives / AP
This Oct. 6, 1906 stereo photograph provided by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History shows view of earthquake-damaged San Francisco.
Frederick Eugene Ives / AP
This Oct. 6, 1906 stereo photograph provided by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History shows view of earthquake-damaged San Francisco.
I didn’t even know color stereo photographs existed in the early 1900’s. I'd love to see these with the stereo-optic viewer.
AP: A museum volunteer has unearthed what the Smithsonian Institution believes to be the first — and perhaps only — color photographs of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire that nearly leveled the city.
The six never-published images were snapped by photography innovator Frederick Eugene Ives several months after the April 1906 "Great Quake," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Most were taken from the roof of the hotel where Ives stayed during an October 1906 visit. Read the full story here.
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That's awesome! I love old photos. They are a real glimpse into our past.
Remarkable photographs. I hope they find even more. How innovative Mr. Ives was!
Holy crap! looks like Haiti!
Great pictures.
very cool
My grandparents had a stereoscope, and it was a lot of fun to look at 3-D pictures when I was a kid.
If you are good with cut and paste in windows paint. You can separate any one of these images into two jpegs, a "left" image and a "right" image.
Next you can use one of the free "Stereograph Creators" that are available on the internet. It will superimpose the two images into one that can be looked at with good old fasioned red and blue 3-D glasses. No stereo-scope needed
If you look at the space between the two photos, and let your eyes go just a little bit cross-eyed, you can get the two photos to blend into one image and see the full effect. It's pretty cool! Just don't do it for too long or your eyes will get permanently stuck that way! :)
Remarkable! Looks like California in 2012 is going to... (according to some).
105 years and the public is just now seeing them. Fascinating photos.
And I thought I had seen most of the photo's of the "aftermath" WOW!!! how great these are. Yes the old fashioned cardboard glasses will work on these prints without the stereoscope device.
These are absolutely fantastic. Instead of looking at black & white/sepia photos, these look like they were taken yesterday. Imagine they are more than 100 years old! That is awesome. Love them.
Lovely pictures ,I especially love the colours.
I changed the zoom level on my monitor to 75%, grabbed my antique stereoscope and held it up to the monitor. The pictures look rather remarkable considering their age. I have some color stereo "slides" dating back to 1901 showing T Roosevelt inauguration, but on close examination, these are copied from hand-colored photos. The ones shown here are undoubtedly some of the earliest actual color photos
An absolutely amazing discovery more than a century after the event. Thanks for posting these remarkable photos.
Almost looks better and more clean then than it does today.
These photos are fantastic!
Why is it there always have to be people like Cavey Wavey and newsvineblows to put things down? They're great photos--skip all the ugliness, it just isn't necessary.
Looks to me like what the city & Tenderloin will look like if someone in our city government doesn't really do something to help the homelessness & street people problem. Otherwise, betwenn the crack problem the police have largely ignored (driving by obvious deals going on but not bothering to stop), the rising violent crime rate in the city, foreclosures, ridiculous rent & housing prices and the takeover by the Bed Bug army that is invading - we'll have ssome big problems. Oh, I forgot to mention our crumbling infrastructure too!
And please don't tell me the crime rate is improving because it's not. Come live down in the TL and observe life here, watch everywhere you go cautiously for thieves to steal all of your @!$%# - 4 years ago, I could walk around this entire city (mayne not Bayview) and always felt safe. A nice selection of well dressed politicians addressing the media about the supposed decrease in crime rates & violent crime rates is all a charade. Why do you think they got that new computer online tracking system that Gascon' wanted? With a new system, he & CamelA could reclassify incidents officers had already processed because upon review of these higher profile cases - they would determine that the officer had been overzealous in classifying incidents that weren't so "violent" or bad.
It's the same BS corruption that got us in trouble in this downturn & that sunk huge corporations in the aftermath (Arthur Andersen, ENRON< MCI Worldcom, just to name a few). Fixing the numbers to what you want them to be is exactly what those companies did and if we don't watch it - it'll continue to degrade the good name of SF!
I here there are 3 ghetto's in Sacramento now, so I am sure every city is experiencing the same. The problem can be blamed on quite a few things, but you are correct about wall streets bad bets and corrupt banks pooling crappy loans for higher margins. I think it all sucks and now the middle class is paying for it again. Now they have a guy making 55k in the private sector fighting with a guy making 55k in the public sector. When everyone is working for peanuts, maybe it will be a huge wake up call. The root of the problem is over-population and now with a global food shortage on the way, I just can't wait to say "I told you so" to some of these religious nut cases. I think the religious right should be put in charge of supplying food to all these hungry mouths and there tune would change.
By the length of the cast shadows the pics were taken mid day, either around 10:30 AM or 2:30PM on the 6th. As you scan them though, nary a soul around. No pedestrians, no cars, not even a horse or buggy. Absolutely desolate. Also in pic No. 2 you can see 2 tall buildings under construction with cranes on top center left and dead center. Clear evidence to the improvement in construction technology of the day.
In the two middle photos (3 & 4) you can see at least two buildings under construction by evidence of crane and lift towers on the buildings. The building on the left in photo #3 appears to have been under construction for a period of time since it is multiple story, and several floors look to be complete as far as rough construction, while the parts of the top floors are open and the outer wall structure is not complete. Interesting photos. Thanks
hi
I agree with the comment beneath. You don't need any special viewers to see these in full 3D. Just look in the center and let yourself go cross-eyed (like you're drunk). If you have trouble training your eyes to do this, just position your index finger, pointed straight up, about 6 inches in front of your eyes and then look at it. You'll be able to adjust your eyes until the two photos merge.
One of my grandmothers visited the United States and San Francisco, some years after the earthquake. She returned to Germany with a souvenir glass cup that set into an embossed metal holder, depicting the ruins of San Francisco. Even then, someone was making a buck with souvenirs of a tragedy.
The first set appear to be the opening scene to the show, "All in the family". These photos really are not that old, I have some from the late 1700's although the coloring may not be quite as good in mine.
Absolutely fascinating. Signage looks the same as it does today. Makeshift construction signs the same as they look nowadays. Organization.