April 17, 2024
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE ~ CITY HALL AND SURROUNDING RUINS ~ 1906
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Early original vintage photograph show the remains of the San Francisco City Hall and the surrounding area after the earthquake.The imposing old City Hall collapsed in a shower of bricks, stone and steel in the 1906 earthquake. It was the largest municipal building west of Chicago and was so elaborate it took 25 years to build. The City Hall was supposed to be earthquake proof, but it collapsed in seconds after the great quake struck. It had been open for less than 10 years.The wreckage of the old City Hall - a grandiose dome 300 feet high held up by the skeletal remains of a building - became a famous symbol of the '06 quake. The cornerstone of City Hall was laid on Washington's Birthday, 1872, though site excavation started the year before. It was built on the site of the old Yerba Buena Cemetery, where perhaps as many as 9,000 San Franciscans were buried between 1850 and 1860.Only a year after its 1897 opening, it was damaged in a minor earthquake, an ominous sign. Before dawn on April 18, 1906, the Big One struck.Officer E.J. Plume was in the police station in the City Hall basement. He heard the pillars that held up the cornices and the cupola "go cracking with reports like cannon, then falling like thunder." The building "seemed to be reeling like the cabin of a ship in a storm."The officers ran out, but City Hall was otherwise
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