Rare unseen downtown San Francisco photos show city life in the 1930s and 1940s

By 1937, the citizens of San Francisco were fed up with perpetual traffic jams. The town was considering a subway system, and calling for an "end to the Toonerville folly." In November of that year, they would put it to the vote with Proposition No. 1. An article in the Chronicle, dated October 28, 1937, described how every streetcar was like the proverbial sardine can. It was stated that, "if everyone on the trolley would exhale at the same time, "the rivets holding the steel plates of the car body would have popped out like Mexican jumping beans."