Stewart Bloom
San Francisco
1915 1992
| These photographs of the San Francisco
skyline, spanning 77 years, were taken from approximately the
same location on Yerba Buena Island. The island is two miles east
of the city in San Francisco Bay. The construction of the Southern Pacific "SP" building and the scaffolding on the domed City Hall helped establish the date of the earliest photograph as 1915. The slightly different perspective in the photographs is due to the use of various focallength lens and film sizes. The 1915 view was taken from a slightly higher vantage point than the other three using a largeformat camera, probably 11"x14", and a long focal length lens. The 1972 and 1992 photographs were made with a Nikon 35mm camera and an 85mm lens. The latter two photographs are by Stewart H. Bloom, who has been photographing the panorama each year since 1971. He is the only photographer to record regularly the changing skyline of the West Coast city. This is one of a series of posters and note cards on the history and evolution of San Francisco. Note that in the 1992 photograph the Embarcadero Freeway is gone, a result of the 1989 earthquake, Mother Nature accomplishing something that could not be done by the ballot box. Copyright © Stewart H. Bloom |
