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'', is an historic 13-minute journey down Market Street in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " 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 fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

from 8th Street to the Embarcadero, giving a rare view of the street before the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity ...

. 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 libra ...

based on the state of construction of several buildings. Film historian David Kiehn, a co-founder of Niles Film Museum in Niles, California, a museum devoted to

Essanay Studios The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company was an early American motion picture studio. The studio was founded in 1907 in Chicago, and later developed an additional film lot in Niles Canyon, California. Its various stars included Francis X. Bushma ...

, 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 {{US-film-producer-stub