A sweeping elevated panorama of San Francisco, photographed from the California Street hilltop residence of railroad magnate Charles Crocker, appears on this albumen stereoview from Carleton Watkins's New Series. Watkins, operating from 427 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, was among the foremost landscape and documentary photographers of the American West, and his New Series views of the Pacific Coast are among the most sought examples of nineteenth-century stereo photography. The card bears series number 3642.

The image reveals a dense cityscape extending to distant hills, with multiple church spires rising above close-packed Italianate and Victorian commercial and residential buildings, flat rooflines interrupted by dormer windows and decorative cornices, and faint mountain ranges visible along the far horizon. Foreground structures show wood-framed facades, bay windows, and pitched roofs receding in sharp perspective toward the city center.

Charles Crocker was one of the Central Pacific Railroad's "Big Four" financiers, and his Nob Hill mansion at California Street was one of the most prominent private residences in Gilded Age San Francisco, destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. The orange-bordered mount carries Watkins's printed series advertisement along both vertical edges.

The front mount reads "View from the Residence of Chas. Crocker, Esq., S. F." with "California St." below, and series number 3642. The reverse is pink-boarded with "Eddie W. Bush" written in ink at the top.