San Francisco Public Library Picture Collection

The San Francisco Public Library has a collection of digitized photos of San Francisco at http://sfpl4.sfpl.org/librarylocations/sfhistory/browse.htm. The entire collection is about 250,000 photographs, and the digital collection here has "only" 30,000 photographs, but that's plenty to keep you occupied.

There's a map that allows you to browse the collection of photos by neighborhood (Cow Hollow?) You can also browse the collection by subject. Subjects include buildings, cemeteries, earthquakes, and transportation. There's also a date-based "views" category that lets you see photographs of San Francisco as early as 1850.

When you pick a category, you'll get a list of subcategories with the number of pictures in each category. For example, the category for horse-drawn transportation has three sub-categories with a total of 32 photographs. Pick a sub-category and you'll get a listing of those photographs. Pick a photograph from the list (I recommend the "balloon car") and you'll get information about the photograph, including the thumbnail, date of photograph, any notes about the photograph, and the subject header. Clicking on the photograph will NOT get you a larger version; instead click on View Image for a larger version.

Posted to US-California