This cable car was built in 1887 as part of the original Ferries & Cliff House Railway system, for the general contractor Mahoney Brothers. It features the “Bombay” roof style, with two rows of windows in the raised clerestory ceiling and eyebrow shaped windows at the ends of the roof, a more complex design than the simpler roof on Powell cars built by the Carter Brothers in 1893.

Its first assignment was the Sacramento-Clay line, where it served as Car 532. After the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed all of the Powell Street cable cars, plus their barn and powerhouse, this car changed lines, working mostly the Washington-Jackson line from Powell and Market to Pacific Heights as far west as Steiner Street and Alta Plaza Park. In 1929, this car exchanged its original number, 532, for 517, to fill a numbering gap.

In 1956, the same year the Washington-Jackson line shut down, Car 517 was rebuilt by Muni. On its return, it began working both the replacement Powell-Hyde line and the Powell-Mason line. In the 1970s, it was renumbered with the rest of the Powell fleet, becoming Car 17.

Today, it is one of just three 1887 cable cars that have only been rebuilt once, with a great deal of original historic fabric intact. (Cars 24 and 27 are the others.)