More than a century after San Francisco’s deadly 1906 earthquake, a film reel with nine minutes of footage capturing the city two weeks after the devastation surfaced at a flea market and it will soon be shown to the public, according to a newspaper report.
The long-lost find portrays some of the city’s post-quake decimation, including City Hall with its dome nearly destroyed, the San Francisco Chronicle said Saturday. Much of the city was flattened and thousands were killed in the so-called “great quake” and ensuing fire on April 18, 1906.
The nitrate film reel discovered at San Francisco’s Alemany Flea Market was shot by early filmmakers, the Miles Brothers. The footage is a bookend to their most famous work “A Trip Down Market Street,” a 13-minute silent film shot from a cable car days before the earthquake, said film historian David Kiehn.
The new footage captures a similar journey down the city’s main thoroughfare, but shows many of the buildings collapsed to the ground. The reel also features a mob of horse wagons and carts, people waiting to get on a ferry to cross San Francisco Bay to Oakland and damaged buildings being blown up with dynamite.