If you're someone who loves seeing San Francisco back in the day, these Dogpatch photos are amazing. While some stretches of the waterfront neighborhood looked just as industrial as they do now, the flashes of another era are here in the fashion, the cars, the horses, and the boarding houses populating the streets around 3rd.
These images came to us through the non-profit Historypin, a collaborative site focusing on the visual legacy of cities around the world, including San Francisco. The San Francisco Public Library contributed these Dogpatch street shots in collaboration with Historypin's Year of the Bay project, which celebrates our diverse local heritage. Year of the Bay gives the public the opportunity to interact with local history and help map historical photos, while building a more complete history of the Bay. In addition to the SFPL, Historypin is partnering with a wide range of cultural heritage institutions, from large academic archives to neighborhood history groups, and they invite anyone with a photo memory or story to head over to their site to share.
So now, history buffs, you can get involved. Can you tell us when these Dogpatch photos were taken? You can offer your guesses and figure out the right answers at Historypin's Year of the Bay page, and see the older images overlayed onto today's street view:
Exterior of Irving M. Scott School (above)
Striking machinists outside the Bethlehem Steel Company plant at 20th and Illinois streets (above)
Potrero Police Station (above)
Potrero Police Station, again (above)One final note on the Dogpatch. The Bold Italic is celebrating the 3rd Street stretch of shops, restaurants, and bars tomorrow night – Thursday, Jan. 23rd from 6 - 8 p.m. Come celebrate this great 'hood with us, won't you?
All photos from the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library