Souvenir of San Francisco. Photo-Gravures

New York and San Francisco, respectively: A. Wittemann, The Alberype Co. Joseph A. Hofmann, 1890. Decorated Cloth. String tie -- stab binding. Very Good. N.d., circa 1890s. Oblong, 13 by 19 cm. 38 leaves, content only on rectos. Title leaf, followed by 37 photo leaves, most, of course, views of prominent buildings, hotels, sights and points-of-interest, but also a few in which people -- Chinese children, among them -- are the explicit subject. This viewbook is scarcer than one would expect. On OCLC First Search there are listings for viewbooks issued by Wittemann and Hofmann that surely overlap this one, but none have as many photos as this one -- the closest in one with 34 leaves, held by two institutions. Our dating is imprecise or proximate. The fact that there isn't an automobile in any of the street scenes tells us that those photos had to be pre-1900. And the style of the binding is very much the aesthetic we would associate with the 1880s, not that it could not have been used a decade or two later. Needless to say, the album is easily pre-Earthquake, and many of the buildings shown did not survive the cataclysm. That said, the general appearance of the city then is recognizable today. Photo File.