All who lives in San Francisco and nearby, may be curious
how the city looked like 100 years ago, and how it was seen May 12, 1903,
exactly 113 years back in the history, when President Theodore Roosevelt’s came
here with historic visit. This trip has been captured on moving-picture film,
making him the first president to have an official activity recorded in that
medium.
A cameraman named H.J. Miles filmed the president while
riding in a parade in his honor. The resulting short move was titled The
President’s Carriage and was later played on “nickelodeons” in arcades across
America. The film showed Roosevelt riding in a carriage and escorted by the
Ninth U.S. Cavalry Regiment, which was unusual for the time, according to the
Library of Congress and contemporary newspapers, because it was an all-black
company.
President Roosevelt met the school children of San
Francisco from 10:00am to 10:30am on this day. An estimated 40,000 school
children gathered along both sides of Van Ness Avenue, west of the downtown
area, for the parade. The wide north-south boulevard, partially lined with the
mansions of the wealthy, was the approximate boundary between the old gold rush
era city (to the east) and the newer western addition to the west. To better
organize the students, each school was assigned a specific block and each
student was given a flag to wave. Many adults were also on hand to watch the
parade, which entered Van Ness at Pacific Avenue, proceeded south to Market
Street, then doubled back up Van Ness to Pacific. The presidential carriage
kept to the right so that all the children could get a good view of the
President.
The parade was not just for the children, adults also
filled the opposite sides of the streets and down other streets the parade
followed. The video below was taken a little after 3:00pm, when the extensive
military portion of the parade had already passed. The parade covered quite a
few streets. According to the Library of Congress: “The camera view is from the
north side of Market Street, just east of Grant Avenue. After leaving the
Southern Pacific train station at Third and Townsend streets, the parade proceeded
up Third Street and wound through downtown San Francisco before continuing up
Market Street to a ceremony at the Native Sons Hall on Mason Street.”
In the clips, Roosevelt is shown riding in the carriage.
An entourage of secret service men walk besides the presidential carriage – in
increased numbers as previous presidents had. This was because of the
assassination of Roosevelt’s predecessor, President William McKinley, in
September 1901. Another important thing to note is that the presidential
carriage was also escorted by members of the Ninth U.S. Cavalry Regiment. This
was quite unusual at the time. Why? The Ninth U.S. Cavalry Regiment was an
all-black company.
Miles, who wielded the camera on Market Street, would
make a fortune in the motion picture business, and then jump to his death in
1908 from the seventh floor of the Concord apartment house on Riverside Drive
in New York.
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