View of San Francisco City Hall from Post and Van Ness Streets

In 1906, the San Francisco City Hall occupied a triangular tract bounded by Market, Larkin, and McAllister Streets. Obata’s view depicts the rear face of the ruins instead of the main facade, so that the building’s rotunda appears at the left side (see photo of the main façade on the wall above and to the right). His vantage point, at Post and Van Ness, was halfway between the city hall and his temporary home among the refugees camped in Lafayette Park.

At the time of the earthquake, the city hall had only recently been completed; shoddy construction caused most of the destruction seen here. The land occupied by the old city hall remained mostly empty for about a decade. Eventually, the city’s Main Library (now the Asian Art Museum) was built on the site’s northern side.

Watercolors from the series San Francisco after the Earthquake
The watercolors in this series begin on April 25, exactly a week after the earthquake and three days after the fires subsided. Binding holes across the top show that the pages were once part of a sketchbook. This group includes several locations of special significance to Asian Americans living in San Francisco at that time.