Heading: (San Francisco Earthquake)
Author: Miles Bros.
Title: Twenty-one original large format glass plate negatives of San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake
Place Published: San Francisco
Publisher:Miles Bros.
Date Published: c.1906
Description:

21 glass plate negatives. Nearly all signed and numbered in the plate. Each approx. 20x25.3 cm (8x10"), in paper sleeves most of which have title/description and number on them. Set in later wooden box. Accompanied by a set of contact prints made from the negatives in 1998, together with 17 other prints in the series, the negatives for which have been lost.

Rare series of original large format glass plate negatives of the great cataclysm that shook and reshaped San Francisco at the beginning of the twentieth century. The subjects include City Hall, St. Dominic's Church, a camp in Golden Gate Park, Market Street from McAllister Street, a panorama of Union Square, a bread line at Hamilton Square, and many of ruins. The numbers range from 16 to 132, so there were likely many others that are now lost - glass plate negatives are fragile at best, and those of large format, as these, are especially so. The Miles Bros. (Harry, Herbert, Joseph, and Earle) were pioneering film makers, film distributors, and photographers based in San Francisco in the first decade of the 20th century. Their large studio at 1130 Market St. was newly completed when it was destroyed by the fire that followed the devastating earthquake of April 18, 1906. They are best remembered for a ten-minute film of San Francisco's Market Street shot from a cable car four days before the earthquake (three prints of the film survive). The Bancroft Library collection includes 35 Miles Bros. glass plate negatives of the San Francisco earthquake but OCLC finds no others in library holding, nor could we find any auction records for Miles Bros. photographs.

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Mostly very good, with some loss of emulsion to edges of a couple of plates, one with some emulsion rubbed away at center, a few with hairline scratches in the emulsion.