The famous "Postcard Row" on Alamo Square in San Francisco

The Storied Houses of Alamo Square

Joe's book profiles the historic homes in San Francisco's Alamo Square area. Many of the color photos in the book are mine, including this front cover.

SAN FRANCISCO in the years before the 1906 fire provided a sort of Big Rock Candy Mountain for the entire American people. . . Good Americans when they died might, in the terms of the epigram, go to Paris. While they were alive they wanted to go to California. Oceans of champagne, silk hats and frock coats, blooded horses, and houses on Nob Hill, these were the rewards that came to the industrious, the far sighted, or the merely fortunate. What better scheme of things, at least on this side of the river, could any man ask?  

Lucius Beebe

Home of Joe Pecora

Home of Joe Pecora

Joe Pecora's

Joe Pecora's

The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air, when the song of angels is sung.

Phillips Brooks

Joe Pecora's

Joe Pecora's

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.

Calvin Coolidge

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That's what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

Jane Goodall

Joe Pecora's

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank

Joe Pecora's

 

Joe Pecora's

Joe Pecora's

“I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Joe Pecora's

Christmas is joy, religious joy, an inner joy of light and peace.

Pope Francis

 

Joe Pecora's

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

“Practice love on animals first; they react better and more sensitively.” 

G.I. Gurdjieff

Joe Pecora's

Joe Pecora's

 

Joe Pecora's

 

Joe Pecora's

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas.

Charles Dickens

I don't think that faith, whatever you're being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don't want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There's so much mystery. There's so much awe.

Jane Goodall

 

Joe Pecora's

 

Joe Pecora's

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.

Norman Vincent Peale

 

 

Joe Pecora's

 

Joe Pecora's

 

 

Joe Pecora's

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

John Berger

 

 

Joe Pecora's

Joe Pecora's

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Buddha

Joe Pecora's

 

Joe Pecora's

 

 

Joe Pecora's

 

 

 

Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.

Mary Ellen Chase

Joe Pecora's

 

Joe Pecora's

Richard Reutlinger's

Richard Reutlinger's

Richard Reutlinger's

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

Charles Dickens

 

Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.

T.S. Eliot

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

 

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.

Alexander Smith

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling.

Edna Ferber

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

All things are aggregations of atoms that dance & by their movement produce sound. When the rhythm of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes... Each atom perpetually sings its song, and the sound at every moment creates dense subtle forms.

Alexandra David Neel

Richard Reutlinger's

 

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton

 

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn't come from a store.

Dr. Seuss

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

 

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
Michelangelo

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

“And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
the Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.

Bertolt Brecht

 

 

 

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.

Winston Churchill

 

 

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

 

Richard Reutlinger's

 

Step with care and great tact, and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act.

Dr. Seuss

 

Richard Reutlinger's

Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting. It is happiness because we see joy in people. It is forgetting self and finding time for others. It is discarding the meaningless and stressing the true values.

Thomas S. Monson

 

Richard Reutlinger's

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius