View among the Chinese on Sacramento Street, San Francisco

The objectphotographed as held, uncropped

Catalogue description

A street view looking down Sacramento Street: a timber structure and scaffolding fill the left foreground, handcarts and barrels stand in the roadway, and a line of low commercial buildings recedes toward the top of the hill. Figures are scattered along the street, several of them caught mid-stride and blurred by the length of the exposure.

The series number, 392, places this card immediately after the Chy Lung storefront (391) in the Houseworth run. The two were made and sold as neighbours, and they were meant to be looked at that way: the shop, then the street the shop stands on.

The caption is worth reading as an artifact in itself. “View among the Chinese” positions the buyer as a visitor moving through a district understood as foreign, on a street that was in fact a working commercial thoroughfare of the city.

Transcriptiontext on the object, as printed

THOMAS HOUSEWORTH & CO., SAN FRANCISCO.
SAN FRANCISCO.
392. VIEW AMONG THE CHINESE ON SACRAMENTO STREET.

Historical context

Sacramento Street was one of the principal streets of Chinese San Francisco in this period; in Chinese it was known as Tang Yan Gai, the street of the Tang people. Commercial stereograph publishers photographed it repeatedly for a national audience.

What is not known

• Date inferred from the Thomas Houseworth & Co. imprint and mount style; no date is printed on the object.
• The exact block of Sacramento Street shown has not been established.