Recently I stopped by City Hall for a tour of Moving San Francisco: Views from the SFMTA Photo Archive 1903-Now, an exhibit containing more than a century of photographs taken by San Francisco’s transit photographers. Jeremy Menzies, SFMTA’s current photographer, led the tour. He said that not many people realize “Muni photographer” is an actual job, but the position goes back to the early 1900s.

The SFMTA photo archive now contains more than 200,000 images, and the exhibit has more than 100 on display. Here are a few of the photos that caught my eye, and how you can see them all yourself.

Did you know that Muni was the first publicly owned transit system in a major U.S. city? This photo from the archive shows a large crowd around the streetcars near Geary and Grant on December 28, 1912. This was opening day of the San Francisco Municipal Railway aka the beginning of Muni. Muni began on Geary Street, and more than a hundred years later, the 38 Geary is the busiest bus line west of the Mississippi.

When most people picture Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, they probably imagine hippies dancing in the middle of the street with some musicians performing on every corner. However, this photo from the archive shows that even the Summer of Love had traffic jams. The picture is from Haight and Clayton in June of 1967, and came from a series of roughly 20 photos taken between Masonic and Stanyan to document traffic flow. Many of the photos from the archive set out to document transportation issues, but unknowingly ended up documenting important historical periods like the Summer of Love.

Another photograph that caught my eye was from 1980. It shows passengers on the N Judah during the first year of Muni Metro service. As someone who used to take it regularly when we lived in Cole Valley, it felt familiar. I also appreciated the quote next to the photo from Keith Ferris:

Keith Ferris is the illustrator of Muni Is My Ride: Portraits of Muni in Words and Images, a 2023 book which centers around Ferris’s drawings of interesting Muni passengers and portraits of Muni operators.

These were only a handful of my favorites. The exhibit includes more than 100 photographs covering streetcars, cable cars, buses, Muni Metro, construction projects, passengers and the changing neighborhoods around them.

The free exhibit is located on the ground floor of City Hall. It was originally scheduled to close in June, but has been extended through November 25, 2026. If you can't make it to City Hall, SFMTA has also digitized a substantial portion of the collection online.