Rare San Francisco Chinatown Photographs from Around 1900 Tell a Thousand Stories

Arnold Genthe’s photography studio was destroyed during the dynamite blasts in the earthquake of 1906. As the fire spread, the mayor had authorized many city blocks to be destroyed by explosives in order to starve the raging fire which swept across the city. The blasting did not stop the fires, but Genthe’s studio and home were utterly obliviated in the process.

The surviving images of Chinatown, many of which are from 1896, were stored in a bank vault and were unharmed by the catatrasophe. Genthe published them in the book Photographs of Old Chinatown in 1909, a testament to a neighborhood now changed drastically by the fire.

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