By Caleb Pershan
Forged by the Gold Rush and Barbary Coast, San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood has played host to a variety of cultures and subcultures over the decades, from anti-Mussolini Italians and bohemian Beatniks to the workers and patrons of the district’s pioneering topless bars, such as The Condor Club, which opened in 1964 as America’s first such establishment.
(Stockton & Vallejo)
The ’70s saw North Beach’s rise to political power with the election of Mayor Joseph Alioto, the son of Sicilian immigrants who met on a boat during the 1906 earthquake and fires. BART and the Transamerica Pyramid are legacies of the Alioto years. In the ’80s the neighborhood played a large part in the city’s music scene, when bands flocked to clubs like The Stone and punk haven Mabuhay Gardens.
(Union and Powell)
On the eve of our microhood celebrating North Beach (Thursday, September 18th from 6–8 p.m.) we thought we’d take a look back at the historic ’hood with these archived photos from the ’70s and ’80s. While these photos don’t show the businesses references above (some of which are long gone) they do offer a rare look at this part of town during these decades.
These images are here thanks to our friends at Historypin and courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library Historical Photograph Collection.
(Grant and Union)
These specific photos have never been digitized before — this is their online debut! They’re from the library’s Robert Durden Color Slide Collection.
(562 Green St.)
(498 Broadway)
(Victoria Station)
(1025 Columbus)
(Grant and Green)
(Columbus and Grant)
You can see the rest of this North Beach collection pinned to mapping non-profit Historypin’s Year of the Bay project, where they are crowdsourcing an archive of Bay Area history. They encourage people to add their own photos and comments, and to solve Bay Area mysteries on their site.
All photos courtesy of Robert Durden Color Slide Collection, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
