https://sanfranciscosanfrancisco.com Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:49:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1 https://sanfranciscosanfrancisco.com/2026/04/antique-rppc-pacific-sightseeing-san-francisco-california-real-photo-postcard/ https://sanfranciscosanfrancisco.com/2026/04/antique-rppc-pacific-sightseeing-san-francisco-california-real-photo-postcard/#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:37:43 +0000 https://sanfranciscosanfrancisco.com/2026/04/antique-rppc-pacific-sightseeing-san-francisco-california-real-photo-postcard/















Note the tour guide’s megaphone. PACIFIC N° 10 PACIFIC SIGHTSEEING C. TAKEN AT THE CLIFF HOUSE. POST CARD AAZOA A PLACE A a STAMP 2. HERE O CORRESPONDENCE HERE NAME AND ADDRESS HERE. Please examine the images carefully as the photos are our best description. We’re always happy to try to answer questions about condition. NOTE: We sometimes heavily watermark to protect our photos and the card images for the benefit of our customers.

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35.5 x 35.5 cm (14 x 14 in). Map of Novato Ranch. Owned by the Novato Ranch Co. This is a scarce c. 1910 promotional map and real-estate brochure for Novato Ranch, issued by the Novato Land Company at a pivotal moment in the suburban development of Marin County. Measuring 14 x 14 inches, the front presents a detailed subdivision plan, while the verso provides an extensive question-and-answer guide that markets the land to prospective settlers and small farmers. The map charts an ambitious early twentieth-century subdivision carved from the historic Novato Rancho. The plan depicts hundreds of numbered lots, organized along newly surveyed roads and anchored by irrigated areas, creeks, and pockets of cultivated land. A small inset at lower left outlines the component ranches: Home Ranch, A Ranch, B Ranch, C Ranch, etc. Reflecting the gradual dismantling of large Mexican-era holdings into smaller agricultural and residential parcels. At right appears an extended promotional text, excerpted from the Post-Globe, extolling the ranch’s virtues: fertile alluvial soil, gentle climate, good water, and proximity to the California Northwestern Railroad. The piece markets Novato as a place where “ten thousand acres of the most fertile land in California” await transformation into profitable orchards, poultry farms, vineyards, and dairy operations. This rhetoric typifies the boosterism of the post-1900 Bay Area, when ranchos north of San Francisco were rapidly subdivided for smallholders and commuter farmers. The Verso: “Questions and Answers About Novato Ranch Lands”. The verso is an extraordinarily detailed Q&A marketing sheet, one of the more complete surviving examples of early suburban agricultural promotion in Marin County. Nearly fifty questions provide practical guidance and persuasive copy. The rhetorical style is classic for its era, reassuring Easterners and Midwesterners that Novato’s mild climate, proximity to Petaluma’s poultry industry, and rail access to San Francisco make it an ideal site for both farming and suburban living. The repeated insistence that “Novato leads Marin County” and that “large tracts will be cut into small farms” reveals the underlying philosophy of progressive small-farm subdivision, part of a broader regional shift from cattle ranching to diversified agriculture. Developers like the Novato Land Company targeted a national audience of aspiring farmers and middle-class settlers, promising both rural independence and easy access to San Francisco’s metropolitan market. This map also captures Novato just before paved road networks, improved regional transit, and the eventual construction of Highway 101 transformed it into a fully integrated commuter town. As such, the brochure documents an intermediate stage in the evolution of the North Bay landscape. Ephemeral real estate promotional maps of Northern California from this era are rare survivals, especially when both the map and the printed text are intact. No institutional examples of this specific Novato Ranch brochure are recorded in OCLC, and it appears to be absent from standard bibliographies of Marin development materials.

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Published by The Pillsbury Picture Co. San Francisco and Oakland, Cal.

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This charming map of the Vista del Mar neighborhood of San Francisco was published as part of the promotional material for a large real estate project known as Sutro Heights, after San Francisco mayor and silver magnate Adolph Sutro. Today, the plots delineated in this map lie in the area between Geary Boulevard and Fulton Street, west of the Richmond district. The map depicts a conceptual urban landscape consisting of plots organized in neighborhood blocks and regularly interspersed with a more or less orthogonal road network. In the left of the image, facing the water, we see the original Sutro Heights, the residence that Alfred Sutro built for himself on the northwest tip of the San Francisco promontory. Fronting his private estate was the famous Sutro Baths, a public bathing facility executed to the highest standards (discussed further below) and formally opened just a few years after this development map was published. To the east of Sutro Hill and Cliff House, an elaborate urban neighborhood was planned, directly connected to the facilities built by Sutro but also to the Government Reservation and Park to the north. We see city blocks set down along a network of streets, and many of these individual plots have also been delineated. Some of the blocks already have a planned purpose, such as the elongated plot furthest to the northwest, which was to serve as the location for a luxury hotel with views overlooking the Pacific Ocean. At the same time, he had become more and more involved in city politics, eventually serving as mayor of San Francisco between 1895 and 1897. There are three important characters in the history of San Francisco that stand out in relation to this map. One is, of course, the printer, Canadian-born Edward Bosqui, who built a vital lithography and printing company in town. The two others are Adolph Sutro and a dynamic and ambitious real estate agent by the name of Will E. Adolph Sutro, a Jewish engineer from Germany, had struck it big in the Comstock Lode and was by the early 1880s an exceedingly wealthy man. He was known and is often referred to in historical texts, as San Francisco’s Silver Baron. Sutro later became the first Jewish mayor in U. History, but when this project was conceived and developed, he was still just one of the city’s wealthy benefactors looking to expand his fortune through speculative investment. Sutro put a considerable part of his wealth into purchasing land, which he then intended to develop for commercial purposes. This was nevertheless a drawn-out process that soon left him with extensive land holdings but few funds to develop them properly. Around what is currently Sutro Heights Park – a promontory overlooking the Pacific – he built a range of significant buildings during the early 1890s. These included the splendid new Cliff House, as well as the enormous public baths, and an amusement park, all of which could be reached by passenger steam trains from the inner city. Like the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House, the train line is actually depicted on the map, despite still being in the making. Inland from here, land plots were developed in a modern-looking orthogonal street grid. In order to sell some of his extensive land holdings, Sutro employed real estate agent Will E. Fisher of the firm Tevis and Fisher in San Francisco. Fisher was a dominant figure in the real estate market during the 1890s, as evidenced by countless advertisements in local newspapers. For some of the larger development projects in which he was involved – like the project at Sutro Heights – Fisher commissioned large broadsheets by the Bosqui printing company. The map in question is precisely one such example. The Sutro Heights project was one of Fisher’s last great development projects, and both his success and ambition are reflected in the high quality of this presentation sheet. Within a few years, however, Fisher’s firm would close following allegations of embezzlement and amid rumors of drunkenness. After his wealthy wife divorced him, and with creditors at his heels, Fisher escaped to the Klondike, presumably in the hopes of etching out a new fortune prospecting for gold. Census and publication history. This map was produced in 1893 by the Bosqui Engraving and Printing Company on behalf of the Will E. Fisher Real Estate Company. All surviving examples would have been among the original distribution, as any additional stock would have perished in the 1893 fire that destroyed Bosqui’s stores. Consequently, the map is scarce, and not many copies have come to market in the last decades. 61060709 lists five examples in institutional collections at the libraries of Columbia, Stanford, Yale, U. Berkeley, and the California Historical Society.

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Real Photo Postcard, RPPC. Creases – 3 corners, also small ones – 2 center top, 1 center bottom.

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1906 San Francisco Earthquake RPPC Mission Dolores Damage Real Photo Postcard. Original real photo postcard (RPPC) showing Mission Dolores (San Francisco de Asís) with earthquake damage from the 1906 San Francisco quake. Clear white-letter caption “MISSION DOLORES” in the image. Mailed from San Francisco, CAL, duplex cancel dated AUG 9, 1906 ; receiver cancel Chewelah, Wash. Message in period ink around the margins (“will leave in an hour. “). Type: Real Photo Postcard (RPPC). Subject: Mission Dolores earthquake damage, San Francisco, California (1906). Postmark: San Francisco CA, AUG 9, 1906; Chewelah WA receiver. Era: Earthquake aftermath (1906). Condition: Good for age with light soiling, faint emulsion rubs and a few small surface marks; corner/edge wear; postal ink on image; writing on margins. Great early quake view of an iconic California mission with same-year postal use. Please follow me and check out my other auctions. Please see photos for item condition. Listing and template services provided by inkFrog.

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We are just having a fine time. We are now in the heart of. It’s too quiet in the mountains to suit me. NOTE: Any text presented in the description above may be computer-generated grab-text and may contain errors. We sometimes heavily watermark to protect our photos and the card images for the benefit of our customers. Please examine the images carefully as the photos are our best description. We are always happy to try to answer questions about condition.

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An antique original 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire real photo postcard, view from Gough & Clay Streets of the Residential District on fire. As shown in front and back scans message for any questions.

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Sent from one of the MONT towns in California. Or even Monterey though doesn’t really look like Monterey area. Please examine the images carefully as the photos are our best description. We’re always happy to try to answer questions about condition. NOTE: We heavily watermark to protect our photos and the card images for the benefit of our customers.

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17 RPPC Postcards San Francisco 1906 After the Fire Earthquake Real Photo Streets. 4 of them are taken right before the fire, some were captured during the fire, and the balance is after the Earthquake and the Fire that consumed the City. Cards undivided back from 1906. They are written on and posted. Check the Pictures to determine Condition for yourself. If you have questions about individual cards i can try to help.

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