A Trip Down Market Street

A Trip Down Market Street is a 13-minute actuality film recorded by placing a movie camera on the front of a cable car as it traveled down San Francisco’s Market Street. The film shows many details of daily life in a major early 20th century American city, including the transportation, fashions and architecture of the era. The film begins at 8th Street and continues eastward to the cable car turntable, at The Embarcadero, in front of the Ferry Building.[1] Landmarks passed in the latter part of the first half include the Call Building (then San Francisco's tallest) and the Palace Hotel (both on the right; Lotta's Fountain is on the left between the two but is in the shade). The film was produced by the four Miles brothers: Harry, Herbert, Earle and Joe.[2] It is notable for capturing San Francisco four days before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which started on the morning of Wednesday, April 18, 1906.[3][4]

A Trip Down Market Street
Directed byMiles Brothers
CinematographyHarry Miles
Release date
  • April 21, 1906 (1906-04-21)
Running time
13 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The Miles brothers had been producing films in New York including films shot in San Francisco. In September 1905 they shot the fight between Oscar "Battling" Nelson and Jimmy Britt in Colma, California, just south of San Francisco city limits. The Miles brothers established a studio at 1139 Market Street in San Francisco in early 1906. They shot a railroad descent down Mount Tamalpais[5] as well as the Market Street film. On April 17, Harry and Joe Miles boarded a train for New York, taking the two films with them, but they heard about the earthquake and sent the films to New York while they boarded another train headed back to San Francisco. The Turk Street house of Earle Miles survived the earthquake and subsequent catastrophic fire but the studio did not. The Miles brothers based their business out of Earle's home, and shot more film of post-earthquake scenes; some of this footage, including that of a second trip down a now devastated Market Street, reemerged in 2016.[4][6][7] It is likely that the Market Street film survives today because it was sent away before the fire.[2]

Several 35mm prints exist with slight changes in footage. Copies are held at the Library of Congress and the Prelinger Archives. A digital version is viewable online at Internet Archive, YouTube and Wikimedia Commons.[8] In 2010, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.[9][10][11]

Automobile traffic

The film records a total of thirty cable cars, four horsecars, and four streetcars. At first there also appear to be many automobiles; however, a careful tracking shows that almost all of the autos circle the camera many times—one of them ten times. This traffic was apparently staged by the producer to give Market Street the appearance of a prosperous modern boulevard with many automobiles. In fact, in 1905 the automobile was still something of a novelty in San Francisco, with horse-drawn buggies, carts, vans, and wagons being the common private and business vehicles. The near total lack of traffic control along Market Street emphasizes the newness of the automobile.[12]

Dating the film

The film was originally thought to have been made in September or October 1905, based on the angles of shadows showing the sun's position. Film historian David Kiehn noticed that there were puddles of water seen in the street, and after he examined contemporary newspapers and weather reports, he realized that the early estimates were wrong: no rain had fallen in those months. Kiehn located the February 1906 registration record for a car license plate recorded in the film, and he found that the sun's angle would be the same in March as it had been in September.[13] In 2009 Kiehn suggested that A Trip Down Market Street was filmed in late March or early April 1906, a period with many rainy days reported.[14] He found an advertisement for the film published in the New York Clipper on April 28, 1906, which stated that the film had been shot "just one week before the complete destruction of every building shown in the picture," though this was a somewhat hyperbolic claim given that a number of buildings seen in the film were heavily damaged and later repaired.[15] If the "one week" statement was correct then the film would have been shot on April 11. Kiehn also found a San Francisco newspaper article published on March 29, 1906, describing the Miles Brothers' intent to film aboard a cable car.[15] In October 2010, Kiehn was featured in a 60 Minutes segment discussing the historiography of the film, especially the problem of dating it. In 2011, Richard Greene, an engineer with Bio-Rad Laboratories, published research dating the film to March 24–30, 1906, based on the sun throwing well-defined shadows on the Ferry Building. Greene confirmed that the film was shot at about 3:17 in the afternoon, based on the Ferry Building clock. Greene notes that his calculated date range is consistent with Kiehn's findings, but not consistent with the date of April 14 which was published in 2011 by the Internet Movie Database without a supporting cite. He also notes that his date range is about three weeks prior to the earthquake, inconsistent with the "one week" claim in the New York Clipper advertisement.[15] A further source the AFI's Catalog of Holdings 1978 states the film is from 1902 rather than 1906.[16] This is most likely incorrect as some of the cars have ragtop or bonnets which was not a commonality in 1902. Many cars of 1902 were still mostly open-aired and many still had levered-steering.

Restoration

The most complete and highest resolution version is a recent scan of 35mm film held by Prelinger Archives, San Francisco and thought to be an original 1906 print. It was scanned by Adrianne Finelli at Internet Archive on October 11, 2018 using IA's Lasergraphics ScanStation scanner set at 5120 x 3840 and scanned to 16fps. This full-width scan is 4096 x 3072 pixels wide and every second frame is doubled for a playback frame-rate of 24fps.

Archives frequently make full-width scans to show information between the perforations that would normally be missing in a scan cropped to show only the picture area. Black printed-through perforations and other characteristics of the print may also be seen at certain points in the film.

Additionally, this version has been upscaled and colorized by Youtube user Denis Shiryaev. Video on YouTube This is the most complete version of the historic film, combining the best elements of prints from Prelinger Arichives and Library of Congress. This version of the film has been digitally stabilized to remove jitter. Post effects that have been applied:

  • FPS boosted to 60 frames per second (DAIN);
  • Image resolution boosted up to 4k (ESRGAN);
  • Improved video sharpness;
  • Noise removal;
  • Colorized

Environment sounds in the video have been reconstructed. Automobile sounds are all either Stanley or White steamers, Ford Model T, or Model A, which came out later, but which have similarly designed engines, and sound quite close to the various cars shown in the film. Some of the automobiles are thought to be steamers, and are dubbed as such. The horns are slightly inaccurate as mostly bulb horns were used at the time, but were substituted by the far more recognizable electric "oogaa" horns, which came out a couple years later. The streetcar sounds are actual San Francisco streetcars. Doppler effect was used to align the sounds.

The video has been used in music videos by Quantic and Air (unofficial). There is a non-commercial mobile game with the same title on iOS and Android based on the film.[17]

References
  1. A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire (1906) imdb.com Last accessed December 29, 2010
  2. Kiehn, David (July 2006). "The Brothers Who Filmed the Earthquake". San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Archived from the original on May 26, 2013. Retrieved April 13, 2013.
  3. Garrone, Max (April 30, 2010). "Market Street on film 1906". SFGate Blog.
  4. Chokshi, Niraj (April 14, 2018). "Found Footage Offers a New Glimpse at 1906 San Francisco Earthquake". The New York Times.
  5. "Miles Brothers: Mount. Tamalpais Scenic Railway". YouTube. Manusfilms. October 1, 2011. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
  6. "Rediscovered film takes a trip through San Francisco in ruins". YouTube. PBS News Hour. June 13, 2018. Retrieved January 19, 2019.
  7. "Film found at flea market shows San Francisco right after 1906 quake". YouTube. BBC News. June 15, 2018. Retrieved January 19, 2019.
  8. A Trip Down Market Street, Wikimedia Commons category
  9. Fleming, Mike: National Film Registry's 25 Films For 2010 December 28, 2010. Last accessed December 29, 2010
  10. "Complete National Film Registry Listing | Film Registry | National Film Preservation Board | Programs at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
  11. "Hollywood Blockbusters, Independent Films and Shorts Selected for 2010 National Film Registry". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
  12. A trip down Market Street before the fire Library of Congress
  13. Artz, Matthew (October 16, 2010). "Silent-film shake-up, via Fremont". San Jose Mercury News. Oakland Tribune.
  14. Kiehn, David (Winter 2009). "The Miles Brothers: Film Pioneers in San Francisco". Argonaut. 20 (2).
  15. Greene, Richard (August 2011). "Dating the Filming of 'A Trip Down Market Street'". Photogrammatic Engineering & Remote Sensing. 77 (8): 839, 847.
  16. Catalog of Holdings The American Film Institute Collection and The United Artists Collection at The Library of Congress (<-title of book) c.1978 The American Film Institute
  17. Byrnes, Jeff: "Test your visual memory with a 1906 Trip Down Market Street", AppAdvice.com, July 20, 2015. Last accessed December 29, 2015
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