This article is part of "Tales from the City," a partnership with the San Francisco Public Library's Historical Photograph Collection.
San Francisco is aglitter this time of year. The snowflakes twinkle up and down Market Street, City Hall illuminates red and green, drunken Santas jam-pack Union Square.
Holiday festivities are a longstanding tradition in our fair city, and this season, we took a look back at two decades of archives to see what seasonal life was like from 1954-1974. "From work parties to shopping to the lighting of the candles, San Franciscans like to celebrate and decorate," Christina Moretta, photo curator for the San Francisco Public Library's Historical Photograph Collection who compiled the images exclusively for The Huffington Post, said.
Moretta explained that she sifted through photographs from St. Francis Hotel Photographer V.M. Hanks, Jr.'s collection, community project Shades of San Francisco, architectural-focused Robert Durden Color Slide Collection, and the Lee Raymond Photograph Collection, which documented the life of the Grand Duchess II of San Francisco (yes, we had our own royal family!).
Sifting through the images, it's clear our town had just as colorful a past as its present. Take a look through the selections below--here's hoping your own holiday makes history.
San Francisco Holiday History
All photographs compiled and captions by Christina Moretta.
The San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection is part of the San Francisco History Center, located in the Main Library in the Civic Center. The San Francisco History Center is the official archives for the City & County of San Francisco. There are approximately 2 million photographs in the San Francisco Historical Photo Collection, with 40,000 images digitized and searchable in the online database. These selections of San Francisco's holiday past are not in the library's online database--this is the first public "screening." Please visit the San Francisco History Center in person to view original photographic prints and negatives.