San Anselmo, c. 1900. Roy Farrington Jones Collection/MHM. P1999.1392
Pastoral and idyllic, this muted, lightly sepia-toned panorama of early San Anselmo was taken around 1900 by a teenage Edward Carroll Day of San Rafael High School’s graduating class of 1902. This is the aptly-named Sunnyside Tract, the center of town at the time of this photograph. The image shows both Bolinas and Ross Avenues on either side of the newly dedicated San Francisco Theological Seminary and at the far right-hand edge of the frame, San Anselmo School, opened two years prior to 46 students.
Although the area had been steadily growing since the arrival of the North Pacific Coast Railroad in 1874, this photograph captures the time before the faster third-rail electric train ushered in a new wave of tourism (1903), before the earthquake and fire drove thousands to make their new home in Marin (1906), before San Anselmo’s incorporation (1907), before the designation of a commercial district on San Anselmo Avenue (1910), before the opening of a dedicated train station (1911), and before Andrew Carnegie’s gift of a public library (1914). This is still-sleepy San Anselmo on the verge of a boom.
Handwritten notes signed “C.B. Day, 1963” on the back of this photo make it extra special. The colloquial nature of Day’s recollections about the neighborhood are truly charming. Among them: “In the left foreground the white top of Mrs. Taylor Sr.’s house near a bit of the old ‘duck-pond’ (site of later E.K. Wood Lumber Co.); Directly back of Scott Library Hall on slopes of Baldy are the Chipman & Eels houses. I think Griffiths lived near the windmill,” and “In the center foreground in trees is the house of the artist ‘Old Man Needham,’ who lived alone.”
Source: San Anselmo Historical Museum/sananselmohistory.org