A Tour of North Point Street

I have to confess right off the bat that I love prototype research. There is something endlessly thrilling about the hunt and in finding answers or neat tidbits you didn't even know you were looking for. No surprise then that I'm drawn to high-fidelity modelling, or trying to recreate a time and place on my layouts or models. No sense letting all of that research go to waste...

The amount of historical information available for San Francisco is quite impressive - especially the amount which is easily accessible online. In this post, I will try to keep the focus narrowed to uncovering what the North Beach area of San Fransisco, and North Point Street in particular, looked like in the 1940s.

Google Earth

My first find was that Google Earth Pro now incorporates historic air photos from some regions. There are several for San Fransisco, including very good quality images from 1938, and another set from 1946.

I was able to trace most of the trackage using Google Earth Pro's desktop tools (the white lines below), and locate addresses of customers of the railroad and other companies taken from scanned Telephone Directories of the same era found at the San Fransisco Public Library. Buildings highlighted in faint yellow are where I've identified possible SFBRR customers.

I will try to make the Google Earth .kmz file available here for download so that you can tour the State Belt yourself. (Update: The link should now you take you to a downloadable file in Dropbox).

Screenshot looking east up North Point towards the Embarcadero. 

The image below is the "west" end of North Point and surrounding blocks - furthest from the Embarcadero and piers. Of note here:

• The track heading south, up Mason towards "Bauer & Schweitzer Hop and Malt," which apparently was the last customer on the SBRR. At some point this spur was removed and shipments were trans-loaded from the street on to trucks. 
• The SP Auto Unloading represents a major customer from the amount of track squeezed in to a single square block. 
• The California Packing Company warehouses (still standing) in the bottom right of the image had four tracks leading to it: two in to the middle of the complex on a 9' tall trestle according to the Sanborn maps (more on that later), one on Beach, and another a storey below the others on Jefferson (the land slopes towards the water here). 
• The line continues along Beach to the right (west) of the image to serve the Ghirardelli confectionary complex - a major tourist spot now. The line on Jefferson is the "main track" (if the State Belt had such a thing) and also continues west, past the Aquatic Centre and under Fort Mason to the Presidio.
• Two spurs curving off sharply to become perpendicular to North Point street - one to Pacific Box and the other to Musto & Sons (the green line, indicating it shows up on other diagrams but not in these air photos). 

The track arrangement here looks like something from a classic model railroad switching puzzle. It has lots of visual interest and complex arrangements. 

The image below is the other half of North Point, where the spur comes off of the main trackage that follows the Embarcadero and piers (in the far bottom left of the image). 

The sheer variety of customers here is interesting:

• the spur up to Bauer & Schweitzer
• the Haslett Warehouse complex (one of several in this area)
• Stauffer Chemical has two operations - SF Sulfer and American Cream Tartar
• SF Lumber Company
• Otis Elevator with trackage entering the building (this building still exists) 
• and finally, the large Simmons Bed complex that spanned three blocks 

Sanborn Maps

Below is a series of Sanborn Insurance maps last updated in the late 1940s which I cropped and stitched together in Adobe Illustrator to create one large image. For those who have not seen these in their original state, they are usually found bound in large books with each page covering only a few square blocks. The amount of descriptive detail is invaluable, and includes addresses, occupant names for businesses, construction materials, dimensions, and other details such as building use. 

This map is oriented opposite of the Google Earth images above, with north towards the top of the image, and the piers and Embarcadero on the right. 

The large circle in the top middle of the image is the Pacific Gas and Electric gasometer storage tank which was a prominent landmark in the area and appears in numerous photographs from this era (see below).

I've scaled the image and had it printed at a scale of 1" = 100'. This will make taking dimensions of buildings and other features easy if they aren't clear on the maps. 

Click on the image for a larger version. 

Getting Grounded

Moving closer to ground level, below is a circa 1950 photo which can be found on the San Fransisco Public Library website (direct link). It appears to be taken from Russian Hill, looking north-east over the neighbourhood of North Beach.

The PGE gasometer (A) shows up prominently, as do the piers stretching out in to the Bay in the background. Francisco street (labeled) is two blocks south of North Point, which is hidden behind buildings B, D, E & F. Several of the North Point customers appear, and after some sleuthing I think I have identified them below. 

North Beach area. SFPL AAB-9572

A: PGE gasometer
B: Simmons Shipping & Warehouse
C: Pier 41
D: Davis Hardwood/Simmons Storage Yard
E: Lyon Van and Storage (?)
F: Joseph Musto&Sons-Keenan Co. Marble Works
G: Pacific Box Corp.

Next time, we will get right down to street level and take a walk around.