Beschreibung:

SAN FRANCISCO] Two large albums containing original photographs of the pre-earthquake real estate holdings owned by the heirs of James Graham Fair, this set belonging to Virginia Graham Fair, first wife of William K. Vanderbilt II . San Francisco: 1904-5. Two contemporary oblong albums of soft black leather, each gilt lettered on the upper covers Buildings of Fair Heirs in San Francisco. The albums, nearly matching in content aside from annotations, contain original photographs of approximately forty real estate holdings in the downtown blocks of San Francisco, the images mounted to recto and verso of the album's card sheets under which has been printed a colored street map locating the property within the city. Each album has a typed index of the properties mounted at front, the list in the second volume heavily annotated with sale prices and letters laid-in from Mrs. Vanderbilt's San Francisco real estate agent reporting the negotiations of the sales of several of the properties (the agent, Thomas Magee, most likely assembled these albums for the heirs). The albums contain approximately 80 mounted photographs (evenly divided between the two albums, the second album with panoramic railroad images not present in the first album). The properties are quite diverse in style ranging from low wooden structures to impressive large buildings taking up full city blocks, many with pedestrians, carriages and wagons conducting daily business in the forefront of the images. The albums 13 3/4 x 16 inches (35 x 42 cm); most photographs 6 1/4 x 8 3/8 inches (16.1 x 21.5 cm). The bindings dried with some wear, the covers nearly detached, the interiors with some old stains, spotting, and offsetting. A stunning visual record of San Francisco from the period just before the devastating earthquake and fires that destroyed eighty percent of the city. The images portray San Francisco in transition from western mining town to cosmopolitan city. The photographs depicting smaller wooden properties such as cigar shops, groceries, and a billiard factory preserve their postered and paint-decorated facades and provide a record of buildings which most likely perished in the blaze. Some of the larger stone and brick buildings, built in undeveloped areas, stand at a distance from the smaller buildings suggesting the rapid grow of the city at this time. The properties line San Francisco's major downtown streets including Market, Mission, Pacific, Post, Sutter, Kearny and others. The prices recorded for these properties range between $50,000 to $350,000, with total sales listed at nearly $3,000,000 lending a sense of luck to the portion of the Fair fortune that was preserved by selling these properties in advance of the earthquake. The properties were presumably originally purchased by the mining prospector, railroad magnate and United States Senator James Graham Fair of the famed Comstock Load, who had died in 1894 leaving his fortune to his three children. Virginia Graham Fair married William K. Vanderbilt II in 1899 and these albums have remained in the family, the 1904 letters laid-in addressed to her at the Vanderbilt estate in Long Island. Original photographs depicting San Francisco before the earthquake are rare and scarce at auction and these albums provide a means to envisage the growing western city just before disaster struck. C Estate of Consuelo Vanderbilt Earl