In April 1906, San Francisco was hit by a massive earthquake followed by fires that burned for three days. Entire blocks downtown were destroyed and thousands of people ended up in makeshift refugee camps across the city.
Not long after, the H. C. White Company, a stereograph publisher based in Vermont, released a series of stereoview cards documenting the disaster. They produced around 37 cards in total, each showing a different view of the city’s ruins and recovery. I recently added four of these cards to my collection, and I wanted to share them here.
The Four Stereocards I Found
H. C. White marketed their stereographs as the “Perfec” Stereograph, and their San Francisco set covered everything from burned-out interiors to tilted homes. The four I have are:
- No. 8705 – Wreck of the Emporium Interior: This view looks inside the ruined Emporium department store on Market Street.
- No. 8713 – Tilted Homes on Howard Street: Houses knocked off their foundations lean into each other in a dramatic tilt.
- No. 8715 – Catholic Church on Steiner Street: The remains of St. Dominic’s Church after its walls and roof collapsed.
- No. 8716 – Refugee Camp in Lafayette Square: Rows of tents where families stayed after losing their homes.
These are just four from the larger set, but they give a sense of how varied the scenes were. Some focused on well-known buildings while others showed everyday life in the aftermath.
Why They’re Interesting
What I like about stereoviews is the way they make history feel more immediate. When viewed through a stereoscope, the photos shift from flat documentation into something closer to an experience. I imagine these cards must have felt powerful to people in 1906, seeing San Francisco’s devastation in 3D from their own living rooms.
For collectors today, the earthquake series is still sought after. H. C. White’s cards are held in museum archives like the Library of Congress and UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, but they also appear on sites such as eBay, Etsy, and AbeBooks. They exist at the intersection of historical record and collectible photography, which is what makes them so fun to research and track down.
Closing Thoughts
I only have four cards from the series, but they are a fascinating window into both the earthquake itself and the way people engaged with photography in the early 1900s. H. C. White’s stereographs are more than disaster documentation. They are part of a larger story about how 3D photography was used to share the world.
For me, these cards are less about the drama of the disaster and more about the connection. They are a small but vivid piece of how people saw and remembered history at the time.
Where to View the Full Set
If you’re curious to see more of H. C. White’s San Francisco earthquake stereoviews, several institutions have larger collections online. The Library of Congress has a dedicated set (Lot 11523), and the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley also preserves a number of stereographs from 1906. The California Academy of Sciences (Their stereograph references are less centralized, but you can mention their collections of early San Francisco photography) and the Museum of Vision hold additional examples.
For collectors, individual cards surface on sites like AbeBooks, eBay, and Etsy. Tracking down a complete set is rare, but these archives and marketplaces give a good sense of the breadth of H. C. White’s project documenting the earthquake and its aftermath.
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