Stewart Bloom

At the top of the circa 1893 photograph is Layman's Telegraph Hill Observatory on Greenwich and Kearny Streets. Below and to the right on Filbert Street is the Lafayette Primary School. Below that, on Filbert and Dupont (Grant) Streets is the original Saints Peter and Paul Church, dedicated June 29, 1884. (The cable car near the lower right­hand comer of the photograph started service on the same day.) Next, down the hill on Stockton Street is Saint Peter's Episcopal Church (1871). On the corner of Powell and Filbert Streets is the Russian Serbian Greek Church (1888), where the Pagoda Theater once stood. Coit Tower is at the top of the 1993 photograph. Directly below the tower on Filbert Street is Garfield Elementary School which replaced Lafayette after the 1906 fire. Further down Filbert is Saints Peter and Paul Church (1922) on Washington Square. When Lillie Hitchcock Coit died on July 22, 1929 she left $118,000 to San Francisco for a monument ". .to the memory of the Original Volunteer Fire Department." The 180 foot (54.86 meters) tower was dedicated on October 5, 1933. "Layman's Folly" as the castle was sometimes called, was built by Frederick O. Layman as an observatory, restaurant and concert hall. The castle opened on July 4, 1882 and burned down on July 25, 1903. In the upper photograph notice the wooden sidewalks on Filbert and Greenwich Streets. On the north side of Washington Square is a large planked area also. "Stulz Bros. Grocers" (in the lower right corner) was not in North Beach, but at 533 Montgomery Street and at 1919 Fillmore Street. Washington Square's diagonal walks were removed in a major "beautification" of the park in 1958. The earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906 left parts of Telegraph Hill untouched. But fires eventually claimed much of North Beach, which burned until April 21, 1906. Some of San Francisco's oldest buildings are on "The Hill," but most of what you see in the 1993 photograph was built after 1906. Because of neighborhood groups such as the Telegraph Hill Dwellers Association, and planning and zoning laws, The Hill has and will remain the same for many more years. Copyright © Stewart H. Bloom