Let’s say you’re writing a historical novel about the Great
Diamond Hoax of 1872. One of your protagonists is a mining engineer called Philip
Arnold. A Kentuckian by birth and death, Mr. Arnold spend most of the
intervening years prospecting for gold and silver in the Far West. His
discovery of diamonds in Wyoming caused a worldwide sensation, and made him a
rich man—after selling his stake in his diamond mine to some of the nation’s
savviest investors. Alas for them, it was all a ruse. Mr. Arnold, and his
cousin, John Slack, had salted a remote plateau with diamonds, rubies,
and emeralds they had purchased in London. When the hoax was unmasked, the pair
hightailed it out of the city. It’s quite an amazing tale.
You’re a stickler for detail, so when you write about Arnold’s
life in 1870s San Francisco it would be great, really great, if you knew where
he lived. Specifically, the house in which he lived. You’d think the chances of
finding his address after 147 years would be slim to nada. Well, would it
surprise you that it’s actually quite simple?
I can tell you for a fact that in 1869 Philip Arnold dwelled
in a house at 733 Folsom Street—an upscale neighborhood then. Within two years
he had moved to 431 Turk Street—altogether more modest digs. And in 1872 he resided
at 224 O’Farrell Street, near Union Square. By the next year he had disappeared
back to Kentucky, never to return to California.
How do I know this? By reviewing the relevant volumes of
Langley’s San Francisco City Directory.
City Directories are a rich source of details about
life and lives in municipalities across the United States. The earliest edition
published in San Francisco was in 1850. But in New York there were at least three
separate city directories published in the year 1786.
What is a City Directory?
In its most basic form, it is an alphabetical listing of a
city’s residents’ names, with addresses and occupations. Before telephones (and
telephone books), these thick volumes served as a way to find people. The
directories were really designed for use by commercial enterprises—more so than
by the citizenry—and were especially suited for compiling mailing lists.
Over the years more data were added. Some directories began
to show the names of wives and children. One popular feature became Reverse
Lookup—a block-by-block listing of streets and street numbers, with
residents’ names attached. That let you look up an address to get the name of
the resident. Or if you knew the name and address you could identify someone’s
next-door neighbors. You never know when that might come in handy.
The 1982 Polk's City Directory shows that 733 Folsom is now the Moscone Center
Later, there was a another kind of reverse lookup, using
phone numbers. These were listed sequentially by prefix.
Even the earliest directories had advertising sections. The
1850 San Francisco Directory has an ad for “Dr May’s Dysentery and Diarrhea
Syrup.” Yum. And “P. Naylor” offered “Sheet iron, tin plate, copper tinman’s
tools, &c. &c.” In the 20th century the directory publishers
sold space on virtually every page in their books. It was not unusual for two
or three ads to appear on a single residential listing page, or for the covers
and spines to be festooned with a dozen ads, almost covering the title.
There were also Classified Advertising sections that
listed—for a fee—companies by specialty.
Most of the City Directories were recompiled every year.
Teams of enumerators would fan out across the towns, going door-to-door
canvassing residents—much like census-takers. There were a number of companies
that published directories. The first one in San Francisco was put out by
Charles P. Kimball, in 1850. In 1858 the book became Langley’s City Directory, and the Langley name stayed in the
title until 1951, when it was changed to Polk’s. By that time R.L. Polk &
Co. was publishing nearly 1000 different directories. They also published
Social Registers and Society Bluebooks for the larger cities. In 1921 the
company branched out into providing information for the automotive industry,
and in 1999 bought CARFAX, which supplies vehicle history reports. Today Polk
is a part of IHS, a British-based information services company. Polk has been
out of the city directory business now for a couple of decades.
It’s not too difficult to find digitized City Directories on
the internet. There are scads of them (yes, “scads” is a technical term) on the
Internet Archive (free). But boy are they hard to find since the
non-profit digital library revamped their user interface a couple of years ago.
Type “san francisco city directory” into the search box and click Enter, and up
comes a page full of listings by year. But there’s a better way to find books
for this city. In your browser type the same search. Up comes a page of stuff.
But at the top is a listing for the San Francisco Public Library’s City Directories Collection. This opens a page of all the books in the SFPL,
listed by year, with annotations of missing volumes. It’s a clean, easy way to
see what’s what. Click on a year and— guess what?— the relevant page from the
Internet Archive opens. Yea!
If you have the time and patience, the Internet Archive is
probably the best source for U.S. city directories.
There are other paths to these really useful resources.
Google digitized a lot of them, and you can go to the Online HistoricalDirectories Website
(free) to find a bunch of them, listed by state, then county or municipality.
Ancestry.com (paid) also has a bunch of directories,
but I’ve found it really difficult to access the images of the original pages,
rather than a database. Here is one way to navigate city directories in
Ancestry.com: In a browser type
“ancestry.com city directories” and click enter. The first hit that comes up
should be “U.S. City Directories, 1922-1995.” Click on that. On the
right side of the next page is a “Browse this collection” box. Type in the
state, city or county, and year. Then hit enter. This should bring up the book
you’re looking for—if they have it.
Hathi Trust has a few. Many local and state historical
societies have digitized directories. The Library of Congress probably
has the best collection in the country. That’s the good news. The bad news is
that few are online and the rest are microfilms that do not circulate through
Interlibrary Loan. You have to go to D.C. to view them.
Well, so much for City Directories. I gotta get back to
finding out more about my friend Philip Arnold. See ya next time.
If this post was helpful or interesting to you, please let
me know. I’m always looking for ways to improve the blog.
Disclaimer: The descriptions of web pages are accurate as of
the date of the post. Like everything else in this digital world of ours, they
can change in the blink of an eye.
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