San Francisco Telephone Directory

San Francisco: Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1906. Very good.. 229,[3]pp., plus four leaves of advertisements printed on colored paper. Publisher's brown printed wrappers. Minor creasing and edge wear to wrappers, tiny chip to bottom corner of front wrapper. Minor occasional foxing to text, about half of final leaf, comprising advertisements, lacking. Otherwise a nice survival. The first complete telephone directory published after the monumental 1906 San Francisco earthquake and resulting conflagration that consumed and destroyed much of the city. Two temporary directories were printed after the disaster, the first issued on May 12; (truncated) its supplement was issued May 26. Both of the temporary directories are extremely scarce, as is the present work. Interestingly, as some mention of the 1906 earthquake and fire were printed in the temporary directories, the present work does not dwell on recent events, but is a rather straightforward phone directory. This perhaps speaks to the resilience of the people and commercial interests in San Francisco to simply put the tragedy behind them and get on with life and business. The Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company directories began in 1905 and ceased in 1907. Rare, with only two physical copies located in OCLC, both understandably in the Bay Area, at the Oakland Public Library and St. Patrick's Seminary & University. (Inventory #: 3972)