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Work Zone: 1930

San Francisco in 1930. "Oldsmobile sedan on Alemany Boulevard." On the sunny side of the street. 5x7 glass negative by Christopher Helin. View full size.

San Francisco in 1930. "Oldsmobile sedan on Alemany Boulevard." On the sunny side of the street. 5x7 glass negative by Christopher Helin. View full size.

 

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Alternate Trinity

A line from one of my favorite movies: "Some men are Catholics, some men are Protestants; my father was an OLDSMOBILE man."

The steamroller is gone

But much of this scene is still there. Alemany is now to the south of here. The odd shaped double house with the doglegs is still there, the 2 halves painted 2 different colors, and they replaced the center piers of the 2 bridges with very odd squared off arches.

Falling Rock

A common sign on the roads of my youth. Could have used a few on this stretch of roadway.

Right city, wrong street.

Following this great site for a couple years now but this is my first comment. Alemany Boulevard in S.F. is not depressed like this. This has to be the modern day San Jose Avenue, which used to be Bernal Street in the 1930s. The bridges are the same except modified to clear span across the road bed and the road is now a divided highway with the Muni Metro light rail tracks in the middle.

Edited 1/3/15: The embankments in the original photo are quite steep and the one on the left appears to approach a 1:1 slope (45 degrees). This is always a concern for engineers as the slope could erode and possibly fail depositing whatever is at the top to the bottom, in this case houses. The Google Street View shows they mitigated that by installing a higher retaining wall to reduce the incline. On another note, you can see the stairs beyond each bridge still exist if you "drive" up the street in Street View.


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San Jose Ave.

Looking back at 1930 aerial photos. I believe this is actually San Jose Avenue in lieu of Alemany Boulevard as stated above. In the attached aerial you can make out the two bridges. Also in Google Earth street view you can still clearly make out the roof lines on the left in the above photo (though the bridges have been modified slightly).

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