Two albumen photographs by Isaiah West Taber of San Francisco are mounted recto and verso on a single thick album page, placing both images within his large-format commercial survey series produced from his Montgomery Street studio during the 1880s and into the 1890s. The front view, catalogued B 1740, presents the San Francisco waterfront looking across the bay toward a dense row of tall-masted sailing ships berthed at the wharves between Market and Mission Streets. The reverse, catalogued B 1723, records a sweeping elevated perspective from the top of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company depot in Oakland, looking down multiple converging rail lines toward the pier and the distant bay shore.

The harbor view shows at least six full-rigged vessels with their yards crossed and standing rigging intact, small working boats clustered at the waterline, and a faint suggestion of commercial buildings along the embarcadero behind the fleet. The railroad view captures telegraph poles lining the tracks, a wooden signal tower at right, stacked lumber near the left margin, and two solitary figures standing on the platform in the middle distance.

Taber operated one of the most prolific and commercially successful photographic studios on the West Coast, and his numbered series of California views was widely distributed through albums, dealers, and subscription sets. The Southern Pacific mole at Oakland was a critical terminus connecting transcontinental rail traffic to bay ferry service, making B 1723 a significant document of that infrastructure.

Both prints carry the printed caption strip along the lower image border reading "Taber Photo., San Francisco" alongside the series numbers B 1740 and B 1723 respectively. The album page measures 8 1/2 by 12 1/4 inches, with each image approximately 4 3/4 by 7 1/4 inches.

From the collection of James Lee Soffer