02San Francisco
San Francisco, 1906
An 1878 bird’s-eye lithograph of the city from the bay, then George Lawrence’s kite photograph of the ruins six weeks after 18 April 1906. The rebuilt city as a later camera record is not here yet.
San Francisco earthquake and fire. 18 April 1906. Earthquake 18 April 1906, followed by fires. Lawrence’s plate is dated 28 May 1906 — aftermath, from the air. The 1878 Currier lithograph is a drawing from twenty-eight years earlier. Do not treat them as the same kind of evidence.
Before1878
Bird’s-eye lithograph from the bay
1878·San Francisco
The City of San Francisco, from the bay looking south-west
Charles R. Parsons, sketched and drawn; Currier & Ives, New York.
Bird's-eye illustration / lithograph
What this plate shows
San Francisco drawn from over the bay: wharves, shipping, the grid climbing the hills, Golden Gate to the right distance, ocean beyond. A Currier bird’s-eye of 1878 — inside 1870 ± 10. Not the 1857 Coast Survey chart, and not a photograph.
- Image type
- Bird's-eye illustration / lithograph
- Source
- Library of Congress Prints and Photographs, ppmsca.08933.
- License
- Public domain.
Event1906
Aerial photograph of the ruins
1906·San Francisco
San Francisco in ruins from a captive airship
George R. Lawrence Co. Camera suspended from kites, 28 May 1906.
True aerial photograph · Reconstructed
What this plate shows
A camera hung from kites about 2,000 feet up, 28 May 1906. The Ferry Building and the waterfront in the near field. Market Street running inland through a field of ruins. True aerial photograph — not a lithograph of the disaster. Six weeks after 18 April. The fire is out. The city as the lens found it.
- Image type
- True aerial photograph
- Structure
- San Francisco — burnt district after 18 April 1906
- Region
- North America
- Present status
- Reconstructed — The city was rebuilt. This plate is the event: six weeks after the earthquake and fire, from the air.
- Source
- Library of Congress Prints and Photographs, LC-DIG-ppmsca-07823.
- License
- Public domain (published 1906).
Afterafter
Rebuilding
Gap recorded
No later photograph of rebuilt San Francisco is in this archive yet. The 1878 lithograph is not that plate.
How to read this chain
Image type first. Then the date. Then what the plate actually shows. A later status — surviving, burned, demolished, replaced — is a documented fact about the structure, not a claim this photograph was asked to prove. The Living Realm sits downstream, in Synthesis.