Fire and brimstone

A few weeks ago I created a post regarding Shawn Glover’s Drawbridge photos, but I was drawn to Shawn’s work with ‘now and then’ of San Francisco "The Earthquake blend". The colour photographs of modern-day scenes in the city contrast with the black-and-white images of destruction – buildings half-collapsed, damaged roads revealing yawning subterranean pits, facades blackened, trolleys smashed. Shawn has painstakingly researched and constructed images reminiscent of Sergey Larenkov’s “Ghosts of WWII series (see my ‘Penetrating the layers of time’ post). 

To put these photos together, Shawn created a catalogue of historical photos that looked to have potential to be blended. “Unfortunately most of these photos end up on the digital cutting room floor because there’s simply no way to get the same photo today because either a building or a tree is in the way. Once I get a good location, I get everything lined up just right. My goal is to stand in the exact spot where the original photographer stood. Doing this needs to take into account equivalent focal length, how the lens was shifted, light conditions, etc. I take plenty of shots, each nudged around a bit at each location. Just moving one foot to the left changes everything.” His original idea was to tear away a piece of the modern photo to expose the 1906 photo, but after playing around a bit, everything seemed more interesting when the two were softly blended together.

Shawn kept running into delays. In the case of the Valencia St. Hotel, he had to return to the scene on Valencia Street four times before managing to get it right. There’s quite a bit of conflicting information of exactly where this building once stood.

A variety of photos taken from April 18, 1906 to 1907 of the devastation of San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, that give a well-rounded depiction of the city at the time. Luckily photography was a common hobby by 1906 and thousands of photos have survived to this day.

The San Francisco earthquake struck on April 18^th 1906 with 42 seconds of intense shaking estimated at 7.8 on the Richter scale. Buildings fell, sinkholes in the streets opened up, the ground liquefied, railroad tracks bent, and collapsing bricks crushed cable cars. However, it was the out-of-control fires that did 90% of the destruction. Over 30 fires, caused by ruptured gas mains, destroyed approximately 25,000 buildings on 490 city blocks, many fires were started when firefighters used dynamite to demolish buildings to create firebreaks, which resulted in the destruction of more than 50% of the buildings that would have otherwise survived. The fires burned for four days and nights.

The city was in disarray. Federal troops and police had orders to shoot and kill looters. Thousands of tents and temporary relief houses went up to house the 20,000 displaced people.

A cable car heads towards the California Street incline while shocked residents walk aimlessly through street amidst the devastation. The tower in the background belongs to the Old St Marys Church, which survived the quake but was gutted by fire. It was rebuilt and still stands at the corner of California Street and Grant Avenue.

Happy tourists pass by the Fairmont Hotel, on top of Nob Hill, which still stands, but was destroyed inside from the fires. Built in 1902-06 the opulent Fairmont had not yet opened at the time of the quake though the interior furnishings were there. It finally opened exactly one year after the earthquake struck.

People cross Market Street in front of the destroyed Hearst Building. The building caught fire at noon on the 18^th, and the front wall facade was all that remained standing. The dynamiting of buildings started at 2.30pm.

Pedestrians cross Jones St towards a pile of rubble on Market Street. The Hibernia Bank building on the McAllister Street corner is burned out, but still standing strong. It was repaired and temporarily housed the Harbour Police after the quake. It was restored to bank use, then again became a police substation when the Hibernia Bank closed in the late 1980s.

A woman opens the door to her Mercedes in the fish wholesaler’s district on Sacramento Street while horses killed by falling rubble lie in the street. After the original photo was taken, the entire area was burned out.

Two girls stand before the partially destroyed Sharon Building in Golden Gate Park. Built in 1888, the Romanesque sandstone building was a canteen for children visiting the park. It was damaged by fire in 1974, and is now an art studio.

Cars travel down S. Van Ness, which has buckled after the quake. The fires reached Van Ness Avenue on the 20^th

A bicyclist rides towards the fallen Valencia Street Hotel and a huge sinkhole that has opened up in the street. The hotel on the west side of Valencia Street between 18^th & 19^th Streets sank one storey into the sinkhole, which was a filled-in swamp known as Lake Coppin. Up to 200 people may have died in the hotel, many drowned as a major water-main broke as the hotel sank.
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People walk up California Street amid charred scraps of lumber. The dark bricks of the Old St Marys tower is visible behind the modern day woman.

People stroll by the original adobe Mission Dolores which survived, while the brick Gothic Revival church (built 1876) next door was destroyed. The Mission District is up the hill and the fires reached there on the 21^st. The Notre Dame Convent across the road was dynamited, but the fire jumped the road to the church and damaged to the extent it was razed. The fire was halted almost on the Mission doorstep. Dedicated in 1791 the Mission Dolores is now the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco. A new grand basilica was built on the church site in 1913-18.
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Horse carriages and cars park in front of Lafayette Park while a destroyed city looms in the background. Lafayette Park encompasses a four-block area bounded by Sacramento Street to the south, Laguna Street to the west, Washington Street to the north, and Gough Street to the east. More than half the city was homeless, and 11 relief camps were set up in public parks.

Drawing to a close

I came across this atmospheric post by Shawn Glover -

Welcome to Drawbridge, California
Population: 0
Elevation: 7 ft and sinking

Over a hundred years ago it was a bustling town and weekend getaway destination. Today Drawbridge is a  wetland sanctuary with the remains of the town structures slowly collapsing and sinking into the bay.
It all started in 1876. A tiny cabin was built on Station Island for an operator of the South Coast Pacific Railroad’s two drawbridges that crossed the marshlands that connected rails between Newark and San Jose. Before long, the drawbridge operator’s friends began to join him, and soon it became a regular train stop. By the 1880s, the tiny town would see 1,000 visitors flocking to it on weekends for hunting and fishing.
By 1926, the town had reached its heyday, having grown to 90 buildings, many with wells and electricity. The residents split into two communities: The “stuck-up” Protestants lived in North Drawbridge, and the wilder Catholics resided in South Drawbridge.

Then began the decline. Booming construction in nearby San Jose pumped millions of gallons of water and raw sewage into the wetlands. Drawbridge began to sink and stink. The nearby salt industry also grew and the waterfowl fled for a less salty environment, leaving the hunters with nothing to hunt. In 1955 the trains no longer stopped in Drawbridge, and everyone moved away…all but two last residents, that is. Luce and Nellie “Shotgun” Dollin refused to leave and fired upon anyone who dared approach them. They were gone by 1979 when Drawbridge became a ghost town.

 Now, the old drawbridges for which the town was named have been replaced by modern rail bridges and 20 or so dilapidated ruins of old gun clubs, a hotel, and houses remain in the rustling wetland vegetation with the honking of waterfowl filled the empty air.
Drawbridge is now part of the US National Wildlife Refuge and off limits to the public.

The story and more photos are at:

http://shawnclover.com/2012/01/31/welcome-to-drawbridge/

Enduring photographs

'Hidden Alcatraz : the fortress revealed' is edited by Steve Fritz and Deborah Roundtree, foreword by Peter Coyote, introduction by John Martini, and afterword by Thom Sempere.

The cover image - approaching Alcatraz island

Alcatraz - infamous for its legendary inmates - is much more than its grim history.
The book focuses on the current state of the island fortress, presenting a unique collection of nearly 100 images taken over a four-year period by 34 photographers, some of whom stayed overnight in the main cell-block.
The photographs highlight the eerie, almost supernatural mood of the former prison, bringing texture to its historical artifacts and architecture and evoking the extreme isolation and despair of inmates, whose only remaining traces are scratches and graffiti on the walls - beauty in decay.
The collection is both beautiful and haunting. It captures the unique mood of this small but fabled rock anchored off San Francisco.

The Golden Gate Bridge from Alcatraz

Although the maximum security U.S. penitentiary closed in 1963, the name still conjures Hollywood-fueled images of the ghostly, fog-shrouded island squatting in the wind-swept waters of San Francisco Bay and hardened convicts behind barred widows plotting an escape.
The colour and monochrome images offer a photographic autopsy of the prison's rotting remains. Most of the small island of Alcatraz was given over to the buildings which housed 260 prisoners in cramped, cage-like cells and narrow hallways. Through the chipped paint, rusting metal, and crumbling cement, the despair, loneliness, and severity of life on 'The Rock' remains woefully present.

Images everyone associates with Alcatraz - The Cell Block

The smoke stack

To complement the photographs, the book's introduction offers a brief history of the island (its initial nearly forgotten use as a 19th-century military fort and, later as a stockade). Alcatraz was discovered and named by the Spanish in 1769. The barren rocky sandstone island possessed no vegetation or fresh water. Work began in 1853 as a government instrumentality for a lighthouse and gun-battery fort in a strategic location - the bay of San Francisco for the defence of the American Pacific Coast. The citadel fort was completed in 1859, just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. In the 1860s it was the destination for military convicts. The gun batteries were removed in 1907, and the citadel razed in 1909 for the construction of the concrete cell blocks, when the island became solely a military prison, until 1933.
In 1934 it began as a Federal  maximum-security civilian penitentiary, up until 1963 when it closed, on the orders of Robert Kennedy, due to increasing operating and maintenance costs (unless you believe the premise of the Alcatraz tv series).
In 1969 native American Indian activists seized the island claiming it as Indian land under the 1868 treaty with the Sioux Nation. They were removed in 1971. National Parks took control of the historic landmark in 1972 and opened it as a tourist attraction in 1973.



The lighthouse with the Bay Bridge behind

On the island is first lighthouse on America's Pacific shores, a light that has guided ships in and out of San Francisco Bay for almost 125 years. It was the first of a series of lighthouses on the West Coast of the United States. The foundations were laid in 1852 and the light went into service on June 1, 1854. A fog bell was installed in 1856 to combat the San Franciso fogs which often obscured the light. In the 1906 earthquake, the lighthouse tower was cracked and a chimney toppled. The present new 84' concrete tower was completed in 1909, and was automated in 1963 when the prison closed. During the Indian seizure of the island, power was cut to Alcatraz including the lighthouse, and a fire destroyed the keeper's and warden's houses. The light is still operational, but not open to the public.

Alcatraz continues to fascinate, and this photographic collection beautifully captures its physical decay.

The view from the Warden's window