Archive of ‘Photography of the past’ category

Another photographic mystery to solve

| Photography of the past

probably downtown Oakland, California photo attributed to Alfred P. Singer a photographer in San Francisco in the 1950's-60's

I love vintage photographs of the San Francisco Bay Area, so when I found this particular image while browsing through a local antique shop I had to buy it. A sticker on the back of the photograph attributes Alfred P. Singer, a photographer in San Francisco in the 1950s-60s. Other than that, I’ve little to go on in identifying the location and circumstances of this photograph. Still… it intrigues me.

From the photograph, I can glean some clues:

  1. It’s a parade of some sort
  2. The side of the float says “Fruitvale” with a missing “L”. Fruitvale is a district of Oakland, California
  3. The side of the float has the letters “SGW”. I’ve found mention of a lodge or fraternal organization called “N.S.G.W.” in late 19th century and early 20th century newspaper articles. I’ve also seen it in old family photographs of Golden Gate Park. UPDATE: A friend on Facebook helped me out with this one. The initial stand for Native Sons of the Golden West.
  4. The large disc behind the woman is a huge replica of a gold pan. It reads “California the Golden 1850-1950”. The photograph is probably of a parade that occurred in 1950.

What I can find about Alfred P. Singer

When I did a search of documentation on Alfred P. Singer on the records on Ancestry.com, I found that he is listed as a commercial artist in room 335 of the Mourn Building in San Francisco in 1955. In 1959, Alfred and his wife Marcella are living at 2134 41st Avenue in San Francisco with his place of work being at 112 Market Street. He is again listed as a commercial artist. Other documents show that his wife’s name was spelled “Marzella”.

In February 1949, Alfred and Marzella are on the passenger list for the S. S. General W. H. Gordon arriving in San Francisco from Shanghai, China. It shows his age as 42 and her age as 38. Both are listed as “Austrian” with the destination address of 719 W. 180th Street, New York, New York. However, it looks like he never made it to New York. I wonder if he fell in love with the Bay Area and just decided this was home. He would have arrived in the Bay Area only the year prior to when he took the photograph of the parade float. I wonder what must have been going through his mind as he watched the parade go by in his new “hometown”.

It turns out that Alfred became a naturalized citizen in 1954. I found the document at FamilySearch.org. He was living at 3616 Sacramento Street in San Francisco by then.

Naturalization of Alfred Peter Singer

According to multiple documents, Alfred’s birth date was 11 June 1906, and he died 6 January 1988. The California Death Index shows his full name as Alfred Peter Singer with his mother’s maiden name being Beigl. The U.S. Social Security Death Index shows that Alfred P. Singer’s last residence was San Francisco. It makes me happy to know that he stayed.

Identifying the buildings in the photograph

I haven’t been successful yet in identifying the building in the photograph. Fortunately, my husband is familiar with both downtown San Francisco and downtown Oakland (having worked in both places). Using Google street view, we should be able to identify the exact location. If anyone recognizes it before we do, please leave a comment and let us know.

 

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Why it is SO important to label your photos in some way, shape, or form

| Photography of the past

Unlabeled photosAlong with taking photographs and creating photographic art, I also digitally restore and preserve antique and vintage photographs (particularly those belonging to my family). Decades ago, my mother inherited a photo album belonging to her great aunt, Maggie. The photos within the album date back over 100 years ago with most being taken between 1900 and 1910. I have been scanning them on my pro-level art scanner at 600 dpi and digitally restoring each one (there are over 130 of them).

Earlier this week, I came across a group of photos (above). Maggie was usually good about gluing photos into the albums in batches that matched the order in which they were shot… usually. Sometimes she would write a date above or on a photo. Sometimes she would write a location. But oftentimes she didn’t. The group of photos I found had her standing in front of a building that looked a lot like one of the California missions and were labeled “Summer 1905”. With only that to go on, I hunted around the internet for pictures of all the California missions and compared each one until I found the correct identification for my photos—Mission Delores (La Mision San Francisco de Asis) at 3321 16th Street in San Francisco.

Later on in the album, I came across a lone photo of a beautiful church with no dates and no labels.

Mission Delores stone chapel

For some reason, I really wanted to identify the building. Maggie didn’t waste film on just anything. Although she was an amateur photography enthusiast she wasn’t from wealth or means—just a working class family that loved to shoot photographs with their own little inexpensive cameras.

So I had a mystery on my hands.

I hunted the internet for photos of historic churches in San Francisco and the surrounding areas where Maggie frequented—Oakland, San Jose and Monterey. Nothing. I had a feeling that I would have to find a photo of the same vintage around 1905 or earlier because my intuition was telling me that the 1906 earthquake was going to be the reason why I couldn’t find a contemporary photo of the edifice.

My hunting produced nothing. I finally posted my photo to Facebook and Twitter with a plea asking if anyone recognized the structure.

Late that night, I got a text from my brother asking if I was still hunting for an I.D. of the church. I said, “Yes”.

For the next couple of hours, we each hunted and texted from our respective living rooms looking for an answer. At one point my brother commented, “This is like geocaching… except without any coordinates.”

We were both about to give up when I texted him one of the photos from Mission Delores that I’d identified earlier (below). I said, “I thought I had a hunt when I figured out where this one was. Little did I know it was easy compared to the one I’m looking at now!”

Mission Delores with Maggie

There was a pause in the text thread and then my brother texted, “Cindy I hope you won’t be mad… but a sliver of the church you’re looking for is in that last photo… Ha ha ha ha… Now that is classic… It’s right friggin’ next door!!”

After I figured out what he was talking about, I was stunned. He was right. There was just the tiniest identifiable sliver of the church in the photo I had sent him that wasn’t visible in any of the others from that group I could have sent him instead. Coincidence? I think not. I was floored because he was able to see on his tiny iPhone what I couldn’t see on my mongo iMac screen.

I googled around and found out that my intuition was indeed correct. The stone chapel no longer existed. Only 8-10 months after Maggie took the photo of the church and Mission Delores, the stone chapel was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of April 1906 never to be rebuilt as it was. Instead, a basilica was constructed on the site and completed in 1918. That’s what stands on the site today.

My brother wrote of our great aunt Maggie, “Wow, talk about pulling a Forrest Gump.”

Looking out on the internet, I could only find a handful of other photos showing the original structure at Mission Delores like the one below from 1898 at MissionLocal.

missiondolars18981-544x400 (1)

It only seemed appropriate for me to digitally stitch Maggie’s two photos together after they’d been separated in two different parts of her album for almost 110 years. I applied a bit of Photoshop magic and voila!

003B CA Mission Summer 1905

Again and again, as I go through these old photos I desperately wish someone would have labeled more of the photos with dates and people’s names. Although I can often recognize family members and places, there are many that I can’t. It is so sad, because some of the same faces appear over and over in so many photos that I know they were important friends—those friends that are at every outing, every wedding, and every milestone of life. I know that if I knew their names, I might be able to track down their descendants and present them with a piece of history they never knew existed. It has taught me the overwhelming value of labeling photographs regardless of whether you think anyone will care in the future. Because you never know… you may be “pulling a Forrest Gump” and not even know it.

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