San Francisco - Glorious City of the West

COMING TO CALIFORNIA: HISTORY GALLERY SECTION 06

As a result of the Gold Rush, San Francisco became a boomtown practically overnight. By the turn of the twentieth century, the city was one of the leading metropolises in the United States. This section chronicles the Bay Area as it became the economic center of the West Coast.

The 1870s through the early 1900s were the height of Victorian style in cities across the United States, from architecture to fashion, and my title treatment reflects that.

Letterhead's Firehouse is based on the design of 19th century stock certificates; I paired it with David Occhino's Nautilus to allow for header / subheader relationships. Spanish is set in Letterhead's flourished Casablanca.

Two of the main subsections in this area detail the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, and the East Asian immigration entry point at Angel Island.

More so than other sections of the gallery, the "wonkies" (flat wood surfaces cut at odd angles) were used in jarring compositions to suggest the tumult and destruction of the quake.

The third subsection connects topically and spatially to the next section, SEEKING THE GOOD LIFE. Here the battle between developers and naturalist activists such as John Muir over the Hetch Hetchy Dam and Reservoir Project is framed using trees and water pipes, with voices from each side. 

Municipal Water Supply signage re-creation, authentic to the period.

Four sections of the history gallery contain large format scrapbooks which are similar to my Gold Rush Miner Journals. Although this earthquake book was designed by Auburn Leigh, I contributed the title lockup based on my typographic treatment for the section. Binding and finishing by The Key.