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Portals Of The Past
Portals of the Past is the name given to a fragment of a mansion destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that was later moved to Golden Gate Park, where it has remained ever since, becoming a much-photographed San Francisco landmark. After the destruction of the earthquake and subsequent fire, all that remained of the Alban N. Towne mansion at 1101 California Street, on Nob Hill, was the marble porch with six marble columns. When viewed from a certain angle, the empty porch perfectly framed the ruins of the smoldering City Hall. The haunting image became an icon of the 1906 earthquake, due largely to photographs by Willard Worden. In 1909, the marble porch was relocated to Golden Gate Park, where, known as Portals of the Past, it became an enduring monument to the city's grief and a symbol of its endurance. Worden photographed the Portals both at the original Nob Hill site and at the final location on the banks of Lloyd Lake in the park.Ganz, pp. 20 and 22. In popular cu ...
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Lloyd Lake (San Francisco)
Lloyd Lake, also known as Mirror Lake or Kissane Lake, is a clay-lined lake in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, named in memory of Reuben Hedley Lloyd, the park commissioner. It is home to a wide variety of non-native, non-migratory birds. Birds to be found within the lake area include geese, Pekin ducks, Muscovy ducks, Campbell ducks, mallards, gulls and pigeons. Portals of the Past The lake is home to some early San Francisco architecture: the remains of Alban Nelson Towne's 1101 California Street, Nob Hill house can be found by the lake, between JFK Drive and Crossover Drive. After the 1906 earthquake and fire devastated the building, his wife presented the portico, popularly known as Portals of the Past to the park in 1909. All that remains of the mansion are the ionic columns of the entrance, which stand in isolation. In popular culture In the Bugs Bunny cartoon ''Bushy Hare'' (1950), Bugs pops up at Portals of the Past. The site is mentioned in Alfred Hitchcock's fil ...
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Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park is an urban park between the Richmond District, San Francisco, Richmond and Sunset District, San Francisco, Sunset districts on the West Side (San Francisco), West Side of San Francisco, California, United States. It is the List of parks in San Francisco, largest urban park in the city, containing , and the third-most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 24 million visitors annually. The creation of a large park in San Francisco was first proposed in the 1860s. In 1865, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted proposed a park designed with species native to San Francisco. The plan was rejected for a Central Park-style park designed by engineer William Hammond Hall. The park was built atop shore and sand dunes in an unincorporated area known as the Outside Lands. Construction centered on planting trees and non-native grasses to stabilize the dunes that covered three-quarters of the park. The park opened in 1870. Main attractions inclu ...
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San Francisco, California
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of 2024, San Francisco is the List of California cities by population, fourth-most populous city in the U.S. state of California and the List of United States cities by population, 17th-most populous in the United States. San Francisco has a land area of at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula and is the County statistics of the United States, fifth-most densely populated U.S. county. Among U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2023. San Francisco anchors the Metropolitan statistical area#United States, 13th-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S., with almost 4.6 million residents in 2023. The larger San Francisco Bay Area ...
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1906 San Francisco Earthquake
At 05:12 AM Pacific Time Zone, Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated Moment magnitude scale, moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity shaking was felt from Eureka, California, Eureka on the North Coast (California), North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon broke out in San Francisco and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died and over 80% of the city was destroyed. The event is remembered as the List of disasters in the United States by death toll, deadliest earthquake in the history of the United States. The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history and high on the list of worst American disasters. Tectonic setting The San Andreas Fault is a continental tran ...
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Alban N
Alban may refer to: *Alban (surname) *Alban (given name) *Alban people, Latin people from the city of Alba Longa. *Things or people from or related to Alba (Gaelic for 'Scotland') * Alban wine, a wine of ancient Rome from Colli Albani * Alban Vineyards, California wine produced by vintner John Alban *An alternative name used in Spain for wines made from the Palomino (grape) *A minor Kazakh Jüz "horde", numbering ca. 100,000 Places *Alban hills of Rome, Italy ( also known as Colli Albania ) * Alban, Tarn, France * Alban, Wisconsin, US, a town *Alban (community), Wisconsin, US, an unincorporated community *Alban, Ontario, Canada *Albán, Colombia *Albán, Cundinamarca, Colombia * Yr Alban, Welsh for Scotland See also *Albany (other) *Albania (other) *Albanian (other) *Saint-Alban (other) * St. Albans (other) *St Albans railway station (other) St Albans station may refer to: * St Albans City railway station St Albans Ci ...
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Nob Hill
Nob Hill is a neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States that is known for its numerous luxury hotels and historic mansions. Nob Hill has historically served as a center of San Francisco's upper class. Nob Hill is among the highest-income neighborhoods in the United States, as well as one of the most desirable and expensive real estate markets in the country. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the most expensive real estate market per square meter, narrowly beating Monte Carlo, although it has since fallen heavily. It was the only place in the United States so far where market price per square meter exceeded the average yearly salary in the country ($72 400). Nob Hill is a luxury destination in San Francisco, owing to its numerous Michelin-starred restaurants, boutiques, cultural institutions, art galleries, and historic landmarks. The neighborhood is named after one of San Francisco's original "Seven Hills" and it contains the Lower Nob Hill Apartment H ...
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Willard Worden
Willard Elmer Worden (November 20, 1868-September 6, 1946) was an American photographer active in the San Francisco Bay Area in the first decades of the 1900s. Trained as an artist and self-taught as a photographer, he attained recognition with his photographs documenting the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He later specialized in "art photographs" depicting seascapes, landscapes, and landmarks of Northern California and San Francisco, sometimes colored by hand with watercolor or oil paint. His career reached its height with the exhibition of his work at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) of 1915 in San Francisco, and the subsequent opening of a gallery showcasing his work near Union Square, San Francisco, Union Square. By the time of his death in 1946, Worden's work had passed out of fashion, but an archive preserving hundreds of his negatives was established at the Wells Fargo History Museum. Beginning in the 1970s, museum curators and art historian ...
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Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a cartoon character created in the late 1930s at Warner Bros. Cartoons (originally Leon Schlesinger, Leon Schlesinger Productions) and Voice acting, voiced originally by Mel Blanc. Bugs is best known for his featured roles in the ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of animated short films, produced by Warner Bros. Earlier iterations of the character first appeared in Ben Hardaway's ''Porky's Hare Hunt'' (1938) and subsequent shorts before Bugs's definitive characterization debuted in Tex Avery's ''A Wild Hare'' (1940). Bob Givens, Chuck Jones, and Robert McKimson are credited for defining Bugs's design. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray-and-white List of fictional hares and rabbits, rabbit or hare who is characterized by his flippant, insouciant personality. He is also characterized by a New York City English, Brooklyn accent, his portrayal as a trickster, and his catchphrase "Eh... What's up, doc?". Through his popularity during the golden age of American ...
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Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", Hitchcock became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, List of cameo appearances by Alfred Hitchcock, his cameo appearances in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Academy Award for Best Director, Best Director, despite five nominations. Hitchcock initially trained as a technical clerk and copywriter before entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. His directorial debut was the British–German silent film ''Th ...
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Vertigo (film)
''Vertigo'' is a 1958 American psychological thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock. The story was based on the 1954 novel '' D'entre les morts'' (''From Among the Dead'') by Boileau-Narcejac, with a screenplay by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor. The film stars James Stewart as a former San Francisco police detective who has retired after an incident in the line of duty caused him to develop an extreme fear of heights, accompanied by vertigo. He is hired as a private investigator to report on the strange behavior of an acquaintance's wife ( Kim Novak). The film was shot on location in San Francisco, as well as in Mission San Juan Bautista, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Cypress Point on 17-Mile Drive, and at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. The film stock of the camera negative was Eastman 25 ASA tungsten-balanced 5248 with processing and prints by Technicolor. It was the first film to use the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspecti ...
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Kim Novak
Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired actress and painter. Her contributions to cinema have been honored with two Golden Globe Awards, an Honorary Golden Bear, a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Novak began her career in 1954 after signing a contract with Columbia Pictures, and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, appearing in ''Picnic (1955 film), Picnic'' (1955), ''The Man with the Golden Arm'' (1955), and ''Pal Joey (film), Pal Joey'' (1957). She gained prominence for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller ''Vertigo (film), Vertigo'' (1958), which is recognized as one of the List of films considered the best, greatest films ever made. Other notable films include ''Bell, Book and Candle'' (1958), ''Strangers When We Meet (film), Strangers When We Meet'' (1960), and ''Of Human Bondage (1964 film), Of Human Bondage'' (1964). Although at the time still young, Novak with ...
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Katharine Kerr
Katharine Kerr (born October 3, 1944) is an American science fiction and fantasy novelist, best known for her series of Celtic-influenced high fantasy novels set in the fictional land of Deverry. Biography Katharine Kerr was born in Cleveland, Ohio; her maiden name is Katharine Nancy Brahtin. She describes her family feeling more like "British-in-exile" than American. She describes her inability to spell properly using either the British or American systems as a result of having been taught to read solely with British books. While still a schoolgirl, her family moved to Santa Barbara, California. In 1969, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, eventually moving to San Francisco itself. She spent time studying at Stanford University but dropped out in the mid-1960s. She then worked in some low-paying jobs, including work at a post office. In 1973, she met up with Howard Kerr, an old friend of hers from secondary school; they were married that same year. In 1979, a frien ...
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