https://sanfranciscosanfrancisco.com Thu, 28 May 2026 19:02:47 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1 https://sanfranciscosanfrancisco.com/2026/04/watkins-new-series-palace-hotel-interior-san-francisco-california-stereoview/ https://sanfranciscosanfrancisco.com/2026/04/watkins-new-series-palace-hotel-interior-san-francisco-california-stereoview/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:23:40 +0000 https://sanfranciscosanfrancisco.com/2026/04/watkins-new-series-palace-hotel-interior-san-francisco-california-stereoview/





Watkins New Series – Palace Hotel Interior San Francisco California Stereoview. He found international fame for his award winning photographs of Yosemite, San Francisco, the Pacific coast and subjects throughout the western states. Watkins is best known for his mammoth plate photographs but actually published the majority of his work as stereoviews. They represent a comprehensive look into California and the West from the 1860s through the 1890s. Carleton Watkins was born in Oneonta, New York on November 11, 1829. He traveled to California with Collis Huntington (later to become one of the “Big Four” owners of the Central Pacific Railroad). Watkins was employed by Huntington in Sacramento delivering supplies to the mining operations. After the great Sacramento city fire of November 2-3, 1852 he set out to be a professional photographer. Between 1852 and 1854 Watkins worked as the camera operator for several established photographers including Robert Vance who had a gallery at the corner of Sacramento and Montgomery Streets, near George Murray’s Bookstore where Watkins worked as a clerk. By 1858 Watkins was working on his own, taking on a number of photographic commissions for publishers and individuals, such as James M. Hutching who used the photographs as a source for engravings in his “Illustrated California Magazine”. He produced photographs for evidence in courts of law and also documented the mining estate of John Fremont and his wife Jessie Benton Fremont in Mariposa County and their estate at Black Point. In July of 1861 Watkins traveled to Yosemite equipped with a mammoth-plate camera, which used 18 by 22 inch glass plate negatives, and a stereoscopic camera. These photographs and later Yosemite images, established him as a master of landscape photography. The prints helped influence the U. Congress to pass legislation protecting Yosemite Valley. Watkins may have traveled to Yosemite in 1858-59 and the first 100 stereographs could include a combination of the two trips. Watkins issued his early stereoviews on glass mounts and on card mounts with handwritten titles. These have come to be known as manuscript or hand-signed Watkins views. After about 1863, stereoviews were mounted on yellow cards with printed labels. These were later replaced with orange card stock and printed labels. Watkins won many awards during his career, starting in 1865 with an award for “Mountain Views” at the Mechanics’ Institute Exhibition in San Francisco. In 1867 Watkins won a medal for landscape photographs at the Paris International Exposition and the following year started printing his stereoviews with an acknowledgment of the medal on the back of the card. After problems with Eastern firms pirating his images, Watkins began copyrighted his work in 1867. Hart’s negatives of the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad, probably through his relationship with Collis Huntington. Watkins published them under the series title “Watkins Central Pacific Railroad” using Hart’s original view numbers (1 through 364). Watkins continued to travel widely, making photographic excursions to Northern California, Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada mountains as well as Utah. Watkins photo wagon, which served as a portable darkroom in the field, displayed advertising for his San Francsico studio. In 1871 Watkins moved his studio to number 22-26 Montgomery Street. Located near one of his largest competitors, Thomas Houseworth, & Co, he named the establishment the “Yosemite Art Gallery”. In the mid-1870s both photographers had studios in the first block of Montgomery Street. The location was convenient to tourists staying just across the street at the Lick House, and to the Palace Hotel at the end of the block. While Watkins won acclaim for his artistic efforts he was not considered a good businessman and, during the financial crisis of 1875, lost his studio and negatives to creditor J. Cook, along with photographer I. Taber, took over the Yosemite Art Gallery. Taber began marketing Watkins stereoviews under the I. Taber label, although retaining Watkins original view numbers and titles. In spite of this devastating setback, Watkins began to rebuild his inventory of negatives by revisiting locations he photographed in the 1860’s. He called these views “Watkins New Series” and started numbering at 3000. Over the next ten years Watkins photographed much of California and the western states eventually publishing more than 2300 New Series titles. Subjects include the Central Pacific Railroad, Sierra Nevada mining, Lake Tahoe, Big Trees, Virginia City, southern California, Arizona, the Pacific Northwest, Yellowstone, and of course, extensive coverage of San Francisco and the Bay Area. By the mid-1890’s Watkins deteriorating eyesight and other health problems impacted his ability to work. The earthquake of 1906 destroyed Watkins studio along with the negatives of his life’s work. Watkins died on June 23, 1916 at the age of eighty-seven. Although the negatives were lost, Watkins prints exist today in many private and institutional collections. Please See our other views. Listing and template services provided by inkFrog.

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Please check the photos carefully for condition and feel free to send us a message if you have any questions. If you need help please request an invoice.

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Trio of vintage large-format interior photos of the Gilded Age resort Cliff House at Seal Rocks in San Francisco (misnomered as “Sea Rocks” in pencil on the back of each of the photos). Exceptional interior photos, very atmospheric and evocative, with superb tone and clarity. Photos show the living room, a back sunporch, and a bedroom. Each photo measures 9.75″ by 7.75″ and all are in excellent condition. Rare and evocative photos that. Would look fantastic framed. Upon further research – and it took well over an hour to find an interior photo of the Cliff House, pointing to how rare and historically important these photos are – what I found was a photo of the tall windowed back room in the collection of a California library which resembles the same room shown here, a room which looked out on the trio of rocks in the Pacific Ocean. This room served as a restaurant in the library photo, circa 1920; the room was decimated by a fire in 1909 and rebuilt. The photo offered here appears to show the room in an earlier incarnation, with a more Arts and Crafts oriented design which would have been much more prevalent pre-1909. The California library photo can be found at the web page for the Special Collections of the Sonoma County Library. Just type in “Cliff House” in the search engine and you will find the photo.

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It measures 9.5 x 7.5 inches and is in great condition. The mount has nicks out of corners at top and bottom right corners.

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