Behind the Scenes: San Francisco That Survived.
My latest video looks at some interesting pieces of San Francisco's history.
This has been a busy season on my YouTube channel! For the second time within a month, which is extremely rare, I have a new video out, though it is a “shortie” (33 minutes) and not one of my usual 2½-to-3 hour deep dives. “San Francisco That Survived” went up on my channel yesterday, June 28, 2026, and while it’s kind of a sleeper, I’m proud of it and very glad I made it. As is usual with these behind the scenes post, I’ve embedded it below.
The premise of “San Francisco That Survived” is that I went around the city looking for pieces of it—buildings, neighborhoods, landmarks, monuments, and memories—that survived the great fire and earthquake of April 1906 and have endured to the present. The video features a couple of highlights, including the Haas-Lilienthal House, a Queen Anne-style mansion built in 1886; the Bush Street Temple, a Jewish synagogue opened in 1895; a few old Victorian houses, sometimes known as “Painted Ladies,” in parts of the city untouched by the fires; and the exteriors at least of some buildings that technically survived the disasters but were extensively rebuilt after it, like the Flood mansion and the St. Francis Hotel. I’ve done a couple of articles here on the Garden showcasing some of the things I saw on my trip to the Bay City at the end of April and beginning of May, so if you’re a regular reader you’re probably already familiar with them. In the video there’s even a direct shout-out to this blog, because one of the places I went was the site of the old Cliff House, which I featured in the Historic Photos series. That version of the Cliff House burned down in 1907 and was replaced by the structure that’s there now, but it was such an interesting location that I felt I had to include it.
