Notes on the 1906 Panorama of San Jose
Peter Nurkse
nurkse@gmail.com
You can view larger scans of this panorama here:
Left half,
Right half.
Part of the value of this picture is that anyone at all could have useful comments and
insights about it. Not just historians and photographers, but also residents and school
children and city planners and artists and builders and architects and writers and
anyone at all. And this picture could be as valuable to many people as a source of
comments and insights in 2106 as it is today, that’s the power of a major historical
document. It can survive long after most of our current daily issues and crises are long
forgotten.
Much of the information in these notes comes from "San Jose’s Historic Downtown", by
Lauren Gilbert and Bob Johnson, recently published in 2004 and a good pictorial guide
to the places in the history of San Jose.
Hotel Vendome is the large building at extreme left, above the railroad yards. It was
a destination resort of the period, and survived the quake (although an annex
collapsed). The Library of Congress even has an 1897 short film on-line of horses and
carriages passing by the Hotel Vendome. Small and crude, an early film, but so like
early digital video experiments of a few years ago, a reminder that the past can
repeat itself again in the present.
to the rear of the hotel, you can see the large stables building, located as far away as
possible on the property from the guest rooms. The hotel offered a 7 hour coach ride
to the top of Mt. Hamilton, a short pause there to admire the view and see the
observatory, followed by a 4 hour ride back to the hotel. So a large stables building
was appropriate, for the guests’ horses as well. Nowadays we expect any destination
resort to have lots of parking, perhaps a 2 or 3 story parking garage. What will
destination resorts have in 2106? Bigger parking garages? Or back to stables? Not
clear, but worth some imaginative thinking.
the railroad yards have names of different dried fruit companies on the roofs of the
storage sheds. Some roofs have the lettering traced on the negative, to make it more
readable. And some have illegible lettering, perhaps they didn’t want more
publicity. At this time, there wasn’t refrigeration or local ice sources, so produce
shipped longer distances was usually dried fruit. The size of the railroad yards and
the storage sheds shows the importance of shipping that fruit.
following the railroad tracks out of town north towards Oakland, you can see where
they cross N. 10th St., out in the middle of open pastures. The railroad still crosses N.
10th St. today at the same point. The open pasture on this side of that intersection is
now the 101/880 interchange. If someone in 1906 had been given a vision of the
future of that pasture, they could have thought they were seeing a nightmare. And
in 2106, after another century resolving energy problems, there could be pasture
there again, the future is rarely just more of the same that we have today.
all through the 1906 panoramas of local cities by George Lawrence, the most stable
visible form of transportation, compared with 2006, is the railroads. That suggests
public investment in rail transportation may be well spent, even if immediate returns
are more difficult to find. Because in 2106 rail transportation may still be the most
stable form of transportation, and people then may appreciate if we invest in
railroads today and keep railroads in operation.
if you scroll over so that the words "SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA" on the photo are in
the lower left corner of your view, now you’re looking down into a residential
neighborhood. On many houses, you can see white powder marks below the
chimneys. Those show where brick chimneys collapsed in the quake, same marks
were visible in neighborhoods in Santa Cruz after the 1989 quake. When brick or
masonry structures collapse in an earthquake, the bricks or stone don’t break, it’s
usually the mortar that crumbles into a white powder, which then stains roofs and
walls and sidewalks.
moving over more to the right, towards the center of the picture, there’s St. James
park, a large dark block of trees. More trees than St. James park has today. Although
today we probably have more trees in residential areas, it seems over the last century
cities everywhere have reduced the density of trees in public spaces, like St James
Park. Often with a goal to reduce crime in parks. Presumably in 1906 they didn’t
have much concern for crime in public parks, and they allowed themselves to have
many more trees instead.
the building with the dome in front of St James Park is the county courthouse
(entrance from N. First St., on the park side). Some people say the dome was built
when there was a chance San Jose might become the state capital. The dome
survived the quake in good shape, but collapsed in a fire in 1931, after which the
courthouse was rebuilt with an extra story. To the left of the courthouse in this view
is the Hall of Records, built in Romanesque style. And on our side of the Hall of
Records is the brand new Hall of Justice, completed when the quake struck but not
yet dedicated. You can see there was heavy damage to the left side façade, the stones
fell down onto the ground between the building and the street. This building was so
damaged it had to be rebuilt, and today the Superior Court building occupies the
site.
if you go straight down to the bottom of the picture from the courthouse, on the
right side at the bottom is a 3 story light color building, with some elegant arches on
the ground story, the Fallon House. It’s much more elegant, at least in this view of
the rear, than the present Fallon House, which was remodeled to remove windows
and the arches at the back, and to tack on a rear addition sometime soon after 1906.
across the street from the Fallon House is the Peralta Adobe, which you can identify
because it isn’t exactly perpendicular to the street, the roof line is at a slight angle
because the building was there before the street. There are some more buildings to
the right in the picture, at the same alignment as the Peralta Adobe, but they aren’t
there today.
on the right side of St. James Park, directly across the street from the park, is a
church with a sharp pointed steeple. That’s Trinity Episcopalian Church, at the
corner of St. John St. and Second St., still there today. It’s a wooden building and the
oldest surviving church building in San Jose today, originally built in 1863 and
altered at different times since then. On the other hand, going half a block to the
right down Second St., on the far side of that street you see the ruins of a church, the
First Presbyterian Church. The rear half of the church is still standing, but you see
only some foundations left for the front half of the church, which included the
steeple. Again the quake wreckage has been efficiently removed within two months.
all over the picture you can see washing hung out to dry on clothes lines. No dryers,
so the only way to dry clothes in quantity was the sun. You can tell the Fallon House
was still a private building, not a commercial building as after the later remodel,
because of the clothes line and laundry out in back. Often you can begin to make out
the individual pieces of clothing on the clotheslines.
moving over to the right from St. James Park, we’re in the downtown area. The most
distinctive landmark here is the Electric Tower, at Santa Clara and Market St., built
to illuminate whole blocks around. It appears in this picture outlined in thin white
lines, because somebody scratched the outline into the negative, so that people
viewing the picture could make out the Electric Tower. It was a landmark,
purchasers of the photo would want to be sure to see it, not just a faint outline of the
steel beams.
also outlined on the negative is the top story of the Rea Building, on the near side of
that same intersection. That was the tallest building downtown, so perhaps worth
extra attention on the negative. It was originally a 3 story building, the Masonic and
Odd Fellows building, built in 1865, but damaged in the 1868 earthquake. It was
then repaired as an office building and called the Hensley Block. In 1880 a Gilroy
farmer, Thomas Rea, bought it, and later he raised the roof and added two more
stories on top under the raised roof. Today there’s just a more modern two story
building at that corner, the San Jose National Bank headquarters.
up Market St. from the Electric Tower, to the left in the photo (although out of the
detailed view), there is a gap in the line of facing buildings over half way up the
block. That’s not a parking lot or a construction site, that’s where the Saratoga
boarding house occupied the second story aboveWilliams Clothing store. The first
story of the building failed in the quake, and the second story ended up at street
level. A rude awakening for any boarding house guests. Wreckage of the complete
building all cleared away, and seem the St. Charles Hotel, on the right side of the
empty site, is open for business as usual.
fire after the quake did the most damage in San Jose in 1906 on the west side of N.
Second St. Looking here from behind the west side of that street, you can see gaps in
the sequence of buildings, very different from the east side of N. Second St. where
the buildings are all there, and all open for business.
the Letitia Building survived the fires behind it on Second St. in 1906. This building
also survived the downtown fire of 1892, when over 40 other buildings were
destroyed, because rescuers slapped a ton of flour and water paste on the outside of
the building and that was enough insulation to save it in 1892. The Letitia Building is
still there today, with an extra story on the top.
the Phelan Building, which housed Hobsons Clothiers, collapsed completely.
Apparently some of the wreckage is still there in this picture, unusual since most
wreckage was cleared very promptly. The adjacent building lost a wall, and perhaps
that was a complication for removing the wreckage.
the Elks Hall also collapsed completely, although here the wreckage is gone.
you see many awnings throughout downtown, because they didn’t have air
conditioning. Large glass storefronts would trap heat easily, so shop keepers relied
on awnings outside to shade the windows. With the spread of air conditioning, the
need for awnings diminished. Now buildings are being designed for energy
conservation, and perhaps we will see more awnings again.
above downtown is the wooded state San Jose Normal School campus, for teacher
training, now San Jose State. Buildings there survived the quake, but were not
occupied again, and later replaced. The small separate building at the front left
corner of the campus is the 1903 Carnegie library, exactly where the new city and
SJSU library building is today.
at the upper left corner of the SJSU campus, near San Fernando and Seventh, is a
large white area among the trees. That was the site of San Jose High School, which
was destroyed in the earthquake when the top of the multi-story building collapsed
into the bottom. Very fortunate that the quake didn’t hit in school hours. As you can
see the wreckage has again been thoroughly cleared, less than 2 months later.
a couple of blocks further east, at Santa Clara and Ninth, there is a church missing in
the picture on the northwest corner. It was St. Patrick’s Church, damaged in the
quake and already demolished and removed when this picture was taken, nothing
visible. The congregation weren’t discouraged, and just rebuilt on the same site.
below the right corner of the campus is St. Joseph Cathedral, very prominent. It is
the fourth church on this site: earthquakes damaged two previous churches, in 1822
and 1868 (1906 wasn’t the first major quake in San Jose), and fire destroyed a third,
in 1875. To the right of the Cathedral is the Post Office, now the Museum of Art. You
can see the gap where the Post Office tower collapsed in the 1906 quake.
immediately behind the cathedral is the steel skeleton of the 7 story Garden City
Bank building at First and San Fernando, under construction. The building was
completed after the earthquake, and it was San Jose’s first steel frame office building,
the first of many. In 1909 Charles Herrold made the first regular public radio
broadcasts in the world from this new building, and he also did the first radio
advertising (see www.charlesherrold.org). The Knight Ridder building now occupies
this site.
in a straight vertical line down from the dome of St. Joseph is a large two story
building at the lower right corner of Market and Post St., with an ornate façade on
Post St. This was the Home Union Building, and the equally ornate façade on Market
St. simply peeled off during the quake, leaving all the front rooms in the building
completely exposed.
to the right of the Post Office (Art Museum) is the 1887 City Hall, sitting right in the
middle of City Hall Plaza (now Cesar Chavez Plaza). The plaza around it certainly
helped to set off this building, as you can see. This plaza is where the California
Statehouse stood in 1850, when San Jose was the state capital.
