Posted
10:18 AM
by Gene

Based on the thirteen photos Frisco's
Chronicle has seen fit to distribute we hope its city's authorities deem fit to make the pictures of
John Henry Mentz available on the Web. These are truly fascinating things. We start with this one. The Earthquake of 1906 was an epochal disaster in no small way because most of the city's buildings were made of wood, and the streets (and many houses) were lit with gas. What strikes us is that the people here seem to be taking an almost casual attitude to the calamity -- or possibly it isn't so much casual as an understandable daze. (Indeed we'd say the lady to the right, standing between the man and the boy, was taking a picture.) They may have had no choice; likely their own houses were damaged, and the only means of mass communication of that day were the telephone and telegraph, both no doubt rendered useless. I doubt that many of the houses had electricity, even in 1906. That wouldn't have functioned either. No photograph could convey what was surely the most dreadful misery.

Mentz worked for the transit system, and he must have taken quite a few pictures of the reconstruction. In time San Francisco was back and running. That city, which has lived through two cataclysms in a century, and shown the nation its fortitude, should teach the slothful New Yorkers a lesson of their own, and they work within far smaller footprint, though at a far greater cost.