This Was San Francisco...

Just remastered and put on-line are a collection of cartoons drawn in the 1950s by Albert Tolf about life in San Francisco between 1890 and 1920. Admittedly this is a bit early for us. However, the nostalgic view of the past and style of Mr. Tolf's drawing is straight out the Golden Era.

This Was San Francisco

Haversack said:

Just remastered and put on-line are a collection of cartoons drawn in the 1950s by Albert Tolf about life in San Francisco between 1890 and 1920. Admittedly this is a bit early for us. However, the nostalgic view of the past and style of Mr. Tolf's drawing is straight out the Golden Era.

This Was San Francisco

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Thank you for sharing your beautiful collection.
Among my favorites are the scenes depicting the bicycles
& the folks preparing for the holiday feast.
The streetcar I remember when I was stationed
at military base near Merced & would visit
San Francisco on my time off.
I recall that at a certain location, the conductor would stop,
turn the streetcar around & take off again.
There are so many other scenes that bring many fond memories.

Such great illustrations. Thanks for posting such a fine effort of restoration.
HD

Haversack said:

Just remastered and put on-line are a collection of cartoons drawn in the 1950s by Albert Tolf about life in San Francisco between 1890 and 1920. Admittedly this is a bit early for us. However, the nostalgic view of the past and style of Mr. Tolf's drawing is straight out the Golden Era.

This Was San Francisco

Click to expand...

Thouse are great haversack. Being from the bay area it makes me nostalgic for the place I grew up in. My dad grew up in Richmond and I look at the pictures of him in the 1930-40s the faces of the people, the clothes the cars. San Pablo Ave was a sparsely lined Street. My grandmother was a Rosie the riveter it's stark contrast to see the difference between then and now. I wondered how I would have faired in a time like that, would one even know it. Am I living in time's like that now ? Maybe so, but one things for sure. They were much better dressed ;-)

There was a big fad for that specific period in the 1950s -- the era between Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson was what was being referred to whenever anyone referred to "The Good Old Days." They were the childhood years of the people moving into late middle age in the 1950s, hence the nostalgia.

Tolf as a cartoonist reminds me a lot of J. R. Williams, who often featured the same kind of nostalgia about the same period in his "Our Our Way" feature.

2jakes: Its not my collection. It was remastered by Ron Henggeler.

I was recently reminded of the 1940s-50s nostalgia for the Cleveland-Wilson years when I was cataloguing the costume movies in my collection: Meet Me in St Louis, I Remember Mama, Life With Father, Cheaper By the Dozen, and Take Me Out to the Ballgame. A lot of rose-colored gels were used.

LizzieMaine: Tolf's style also reminds me of those of Jimmy Hatlo, (They'll Do It Every Time); Al Fagaly, (There Ougta Be A Law!); and H.T. Webster, (The Timid Soul, Life's Darkest Moments, et.al.)

I quite enjoy J.R. Wiliams' work. I've my mother's collection of his Out Our Way series and have found a copy of his Bull of the Woods. I don't really see them as nostalgia from the 40's-50's though. My mother grew up on a ranch in the 30s and 40s and the cartoons seem to reflect a lot of her stories of life there. Even into the early 1960s I remember the ranch still had a bunkhouse and the three ranch hands who lived there would come into my grandparents kitchen for breakfast with my grandfather at 6 AM before starting work.

Back when I was learning some blacksmithing in the late 1980s, the smith who was teaching me pointed out that Williams' Bull of the Woods cartoons were The Far Side of their day. He said there wasn't a machine shop in the country that didn't have at least a couple of the cartoons tacked up on a wall somewhere.

I need to get off my duff and scan and catalogue the collection of political cartoons that my other grandfather, (the English butler), put together in Southern California from 1938-1946. I pretty much cut my history teeth on learning about WWII from reading that collection.

Haversack said:

2jakes: Its not my collection. It was remastered by Ron Henggeler.

I need to get off my duff and scan and catalogue the collection of political cartoons that my other grandfather, (the English butler), put together in Southern California from 1938-1946. I pretty much cut my history teeth on learning about WWII from reading that collection.

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Start getting off the duff so we can enjoy the wonderful collection!
Thanks!