Lost San Francisco

Lost San Francisco takes readers on a journey back to the buildings, parks, stadia, ferries – even cemetaries and prisoners – that time and progress have swept aside. It revisits the building where fortunes were made, where momentous events unfolded and where San Franciscans went to enjoy themselves, like Seals Stadium or Playland at the Beach.

The single biggest moment of loss occurred on April 18, 1906, when the great earthquake that rocked so many foundations was followed by a calamitous fire. It ripped through Chinatown and Nob Hill, treating immigrant business and plutocrat mansion alike. it spawned a wave of new building, turned some cable card to electric streetcars and moved Chinatown towards Porthmouth Square.

Elsewhere, Fillmore lost its illuminated arches to wartime expediency, the Palace of Fine Arts succumbed to fifty years of water damage and two Cliff houses, the Fillmore Chutes and buildings and Angel Island went up in flames. The Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge made the ferries redundant, while the automobile also accounted for the Southern Pacific station.

Organized chronologically from the date of loss, Lost San Francisco is a rich archive of vanished institutions and communities, full or remarkable buildings and the remarkable stories of the men an women who contributed to the city's rich and colourful past.

Eric J. Kos and Dennis Evanosky are publishers of the Alameda Sun, a weekly newspaper across the Bay from San Francisco. Eric wrote for and designed various publications before forming the Sun's parent company, Stellar Media Group, Inc. in 2001. Dennis and Eric are co-authors of San Francisco Then and Now, East Bay Then and Now, San Francisco in Photographs and Los Angeles from the Air Then and Now. They have written and published three other books about the history of Oakland and Alameda.