Museums In Motion - Santacade!

streetcar.org - museums in motion - spotlight on historic transit - san francisco yesterday

Santa teeters atop cable car No. 504 in the mid-1950s. He’s about to clamber down and stride past Woolworth’s (now replaced by Gap as the anchor retail tenant in the venerable Flood Building) to dodge the PCCs and Iron Monsters on Market and take his rightful place in The Emporium (now being converted into Bloomingdale’s). The crowds in both pictures are impressive, stretching several people deep for blocks. It’s a reminder of the days before suburban malls, when serious shopping required a trip to Downtown San Francisco. And note how well dressed the crowds are: most men in jackets and ties, most women wearing hats, the kids in their Sunday best (on Saturday). That’s what Downtown was like in the 1940s and ‘50s.

In a Christmas season around 1950, the 'Santa Express' passes the St. Francis Hotel, with Union Square to the right. The car’s decorations are more elaborate than in the later year above. There may have been a circus tie-in that year. A clown mugs from the rear platform, while the dress of the rider with the titanic sombrero suggests another clown. One mystery here, though. While No. 504 was the standard car for this event, this car is signed for Washington-Jackson, back before Muni installed 'flippable' roof signs. In this era, cars No. 512-527 were assigned to Washington-Jackson, so either the sign was changed for this run (not likely), or it predates the assignment of No. 504. Who knows, maybe the weight of all those decorations on top in this display is what caused them to pick a single car and strengthen its roof.

Santacade!

By Rick Laubscher

As I headed out from Market Street Railway’s venerable Flood Building office one day during the holiday season a few years back, I encountered a stunning site at Powell and Market.

Headed in from Castro was New Orleans No. 952, decked out in the wreaths and garlands supplied by our volunteers. Just then, cable car No. 13, similarly decorated by the cable car barn crew, rumbled onto the turntable. Since both cars are painted green and red, the holiday feeling was complete. Suddenly, I was transported back to my boyhood in the 1950s, and one of my fondest transit memories... Santa’s cable car.

For years after World War II, The Emporium chartered a cable car each year, decorated it, and carried Santa Claus downtown on its roof. At the turntable, he climbed down, crossed the street, and took up residence up on the toy floor (the fourth, if I remember right), just below the stairs to the roof rides. My mom brought me downtown (on a streetcar, of course) to see this spectacle a few times, and I firmly came to believe that The Emporium Santa had to be the real Santa (as opposed to Macy’s Santa) because he arrived on a cable car.

Well that little tradition vanished long ago, but I later learned from Jack Smith that it wasn’t just any cable car they used for Santa. It was always the same one: car No. 504, with a specially-strengthened roof to support not just Santa, but loudspeakers and other paraphernalia that went along with him. That car, later renumbered No. 4, was retired in the mid-1990s, but in true San Francisco fashion, it has taken on a new and useful life. Muni leased it to the San Francisco Giants, where it can now be seen from everywhere in the ballpark, sitting proudly on the centerfield concourse. Renumbered No. 24 on one end, No. 44 on the other, to honor Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, happy fans of all ages clamber over the car before, during, and after games, noting the special decal: Fare $2.00—No Dodger Fans. Some things don’t change, after all.

This story originaly ran in Market Street Railway's quarterly newsletter, Inside Track. We hold web publication of such stories under a three-month embargo. To receive these stories in their printed form at their time of publication, join Market Street Railway today.