- A vintage panorama of San Francisco in 1877 recently sold at an auction for nearly $14,000.
- The photo gives a rare glimpse of the city before most of it was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.
- Some neighborhoods, like Telegraph Hill, look similar today, but many of the city's ornate mansions and cobblestone streets are gone.
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We have only a faint picture of what San Francisco looked like before the 1906 earthquake. The 7.9-magnitude quake and subsequent fire destroyed 80% of the city and killed more than 3,000 people, making it the deadliest disaster in California history.
So when a rare 1877 panorama of the city was put up for auction earlier this month, it sold for nearly $14,000.
The image consists of 11 prints taken by Eadweard Muybridge, a photographer known for his stop-motion shots of animals. Some people credit him as the father of the motion picture, but Muybridge was also responsible for preserving many of San Francisco's historic buildings on camera. At the time his panorama was published, an accordion-folded version would have sold for about $10 (around $2,400 today).
His photograph series captures a time of rapid development in San Francisco, when the city was erecting ornate hotels and mansions alongside modest homes and cable-car tracks. Some neighborhoods that appear in the panorama, like Telegraph Hill, look similar today, while others have been completely transformed.
Here's how the city captured in Muybridge's photographs compares to modern San Francisco.
SEE ALSO: Amazing images of San Francisco before it was a city
Muybridge took the panorama from a mansion on Nob Hill.
The mansion belonged to Mark Hopkins, one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad. At the time of Muybridge's photoshoot, the mansion was still under construction, but its tower was already the tallest point in San Francisco.
The home survived the 1906 earthquake, but was destroyed by the ensuing fire.
The site is now home to the luxury InterContinental Mark Hopkins hotel.
At around 300 feet tall, the building is no longer the tallest spot in the city.
The first print in Muybridge's panorama shows a mansion belonging to Charles Crocker, another founder of the Central Pacific Railroad.
Crocker died before the 1906 earthquake, two years after he was seriously injured in a carriage accident.
That site is now home to Grace Cathedral, one of the largest Episcopal churches in the US.
After the earthquake, the Crocker family donated the land to the Episcopal diocese. The church then built Grace Cathedral, which was named after a nearby parish.
From his vantage point, Muybridge faintly captured Alcatraz Island, which was then a military prison.
Civilian prisoners were moved to Alcatraz after the 1906 quake.
The prison closed in 1963. It's now a tourist destination.
Alcatraz opened to the public for tours in 1973. That first year, it attracted more than 50,000 visitors. Today, more than a million people visit annually.
To the east, Muybridge photographed Telegraph Hill, a neighborhood named after a structure that once signaled the arrival of ships into the bay.
At the time, the elevated neighborhood featured rows of low-lying buildings.
Today, the 210-foot-tall Coit Tower is a noticeable addition to the hill.
The tower was erected in 1933 as a monument to the city's volunteer firefighters. Many have compared its shape to a firehose nozzle, though the design wasn't purposeful.
In the distance, Muybridge saw Yerba Buena Island, which became an army base in the 1870s.
San Francisco was called Yerba Buena prior to 1847. The name came from a local plant species. A few years later, the moniker was given to a small island in the bay.
Yerba Buena stands alone in Muybridge's photograph, but it's now connected by an isthmus to Treasure Island, an artificial land mass built in the 1930s.
Now Yerba Buena Island connects the two spans of the Bay Bridge.
San Franciscans wanted to construct a bridge from San Francisco to Oakland as early as the Gold Rush era, but the idea didn't get off the ground until the 1930s.
Yerba Buena Island was chosen as part of the bridge's route, since constructing the bridge over a midpoint on land would reduce the amount of materials and labor needed to build it.
The island is slated to house new luxury condos soon as part of a larger redevelopment effort.
Muybridge's panorama also shows the intersection of 1st Street and Howard Street, where a three-story factory manufactured bullets for rifles.
Selby's Shot Tower was opened by Thomas Henry Selby, who served as San Francisco's mayor from 1869 to 1871. At the time, the building was surrounded by cobblestone streets and horse-drawn streetcars.
The fire from the 1906 earthquake caused 200 tons of metal in the building's basement to melt, so workers had to cut the metal out in chunks.
That intersection is now part of downtown San Francisco. It's home to the offices of Slack and the investment firm BlackRock.
The city's tallest skyscraper, the Salesforce Tower, is about a block away. Insider Inc.'s San Francisco office is also nearby.
The Palace Hotel was only two years old when Muybridge caught it on camera. It was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.
The hotel was an overwhelming presence in the city at the time of its construction, spanning almost an entire city block and looming above the rest of the buildings at 120 feet tall.
A new Palace Hotel opened in 1909. It's slightly more modest on the outside, but still opulent on the inside.
The hotel, which was last renovated in 2015, features marble floors, crystal chandeliers, and gilded hallways. President Warren Harding died there in 1923. His renovated suite now goes for $2,900 a night.
The old City Hall building was also destroyed by the earthquake. It had only been around for seven years.
The structure's ruins were sold at auction for $2,300 in 1916 (about $53,000 today).
The current City Hall building was completed in 1915. It shares the same structural elements, like the portico, dome, and large columns.
The building has witnessed many noteworthy events, including Marilyn Monroe's marriage to Joe DiMaggio and the assassination of Harvey Milk.
Like many of San Francisco's modern structures, its design pays homage to the buildings that were lost to the earthquake.