The Miles Brothers (Harry J., Herbert, Joseph, and Earl C.) were pioneers in American cinema. In 1902, they established one of the first motion picture exchanges in the United States.
Their 1906 film, ''
A Trip Down Market Street
''A Trip Down Market Street'' is a 1906 phantom ride film of a cable car as it travels down Market Street in San Francisco. It is notable for capturing the city four days before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The film shows details of dail ...
'', is an historic 13-minute journey down
Market Street Market Street may refer to:
*Market Street, Cambridge, England
*Market Street, Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia
* Market Street, George Town, Penang, Malaysia
*Market Street, Manchester, England
*Market Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
...
in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
from 8th Street to the
Embarcadero, giving a rare view of the street before the
1906 San Francisco earthquake. The film was long thought to have been made in September 1905, after being dated as such by the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
based on the state of construction of several buildings.
Film historian David Kiehn, a co-founder of Niles Film Museum in
Niles, California
Fremont is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San Fra ...
, a museum devoted to
Essanay Studios, dated the film to the spring of 1906 from automobile registrations and weather records. Kiehn eventually found promotional materials from the film's original release. The film was sent to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
by train the night before the earthquake, which destroyed the Miles Brothers' studio where it had been kept. Three prints survive , and it has been digitally restored.
References
Articles containing video clips
Cinema pioneers
Defunct American film studios
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