Destination: San Francisco

Destination: San Francisco

The marketing of San Francisco and the Bay Area as a world-famous tourist destination is a project with strong historical links to the airline industry. Destination: San Francisco, developed in collaboration with local historian and former San Francisco Chronicle urban design critic, John King, as well as the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library, shares key moments of this history though images, objects and ephemera going back over 85 years. 

The re-emergence of San Francisco in the early twentieth century from the devastation of the 1906 earthquake was marked by the construction of the iconic Golden Gate and Bay Bridges and celebrated with the opening of the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. This event marked the first examples of the city being marketed as a leisure destination accessible by air and both Pan American Airways and United Air Lines were featured exhibitors at that exposition. The new impressive bridges were quickly adopted as symbols of the city’s unique setting and were featured in a wide array of airline and tourist marketing campaigns. In the late 1940s, public outcry over the planned abolishment of the cable car system elevated those unusual vehicles into an enduring icon of the city’s quirky identity. Both the suspension bridge and the cable car continue to serve as visual shorthand for San Francisco in travel marketing to the present day. These displays are complemented by photographic commissions for the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau by photographers Scott Chernis and Craig Buchanan.

[image]
United Air Lines magazine advertisement  c.1955
paper, ink
SFO Museum Collection
Gift of Thomas G. Dragges in memory of Robert May
2001.109.296
L2026.0401.044