San Francisco California-1952: Water Tower and Stone Building

$149 · CommercialDirect license: commercial and editorial use. $149 flat from Stockfilm. Royalty-free worldwide license for commercial and editorial use, delivered as the restored 4K master.

Year1952
Decade1950s
LocationSan Francisco, California, United States
Duration5s
Price$149 USD
Collection1952 San Francisco California

$149 · CommercialDirect license: commercial and editorial use

$149 USD flat · royalty-free worldwide · 4K restored master (MP4)

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Stockfilm licenses the rights identified in the applicable agreement. Additional use-specific review may be required. See the Licensing Guide and Archive Integrity.

Water Tower and Stone Building — Clip Details

Shot on 8mm film in 1952, this vintage home movie captures a grainy, purple-tinted urban skyline from a high vantage point. The camera pans slowly across a large stone building with a flat roof, revealing a prominent water tower on a metal lattice frame against a pale sky. The footage exhibits classic Super 8 film characteristics—grain, light leaks, and slight motion blur—evoking a nostalgic, archival feel of mid-century San Francisco. The scene suggests a quiet, observational moment from a residential window, with the building and tower serving as enduring landmarks of the era.

Licensing & Technical Details

Original Format: 8mm / Super 8 Home Movie
Resolution: 4K restored master (MP4)
License: Direct license: commercial and editorial use
Delivery: Instant Digital Download
Duration: 5s
Price: $149 USD
Clip ID: 123341137

Rights & Clearance

$149 · Commercial Direct license: commercial and editorial use. $149 flat from Stockfilm. Royalty-free worldwide license for commercial and editorial use, delivered as the restored 4K master.

No recognizable people, logos, or music are flagged. Lower-risk for commercial use, subject to your own review.

People visible: No
Logos / trademarks: No
Audible music: No

Flags come from automated catalog metadata, not a legal opinion. The source is an original 8mm / Super 8 Home Movie reel. For high-stakes commercial use, request a full rights review.

Source & Documentation

Source reel: Reel 1234 · 8mm · 5″ reel
Original reel label: miss universe
Reel-level year note: 1952
Reel-level location note: california
Date: 1952 Estimated (Catalog estimate from the footage and file metadata; not independently confirmed.)
Date evidence: Catalog estimate. A reel-level note shows the same year, but the clip-to-reel link is itself a catalog match, so this is not counted as independent confirmation.
Location: San Francisco, California, United States Estimated (Catalog estimate from the footage and file metadata; not independently confirmed.)
Location evidence: Catalog estimate. A reel-level location note is linked, but the clip-to-reel link is itself a catalog match, so this is not counted as independent confirmation.
Licensing route: Direct license available from Stockfilm

Confidence labels are defined on Archive Integrity. Fields without a recorded value are shown as not recorded rather than assumed.

View source reel context Open Clip Documentation Record Request source information

Topics & Keywords

Archive Intelligence

Archive brief fit: Useful for 1950s San Francisco archive requests needing a brief urban rooftop, water tower, or institutional-building cutaway from home-movie footage.
Period detail: The frames may show mid-century urban rooflines, a lattice water tower, pale masonry walls, and a high-window vantage consistent with the supplied 1952 San Francisco metadata.
Home-movie behavior: The clip has the observational feel of a visitor or resident filming a distant skyline through a window rather than staging a scene.
What appears in frame: Visible elements include a large flat-roofed stone or masonry building, a metal-framed water tower, pale sky, window-edge shadows, film gate borders, and soft rooftop silhouettes.
Film character: The 8mm scan carries blue-purple color shift, visible grain, soft focus, slight handheld drift, and dark frame edges that read as authentic home-movie texture.
Edit role: An editor could use this as a quiet establishing insert, rooftop transition, institutional cutaway, or memory beat within a mid-century San Francisco sequence.
Historical context: The footage offers a distant urban view centered on utility and civic-scale architecture, without visible people, traffic, signage, or street-level activity.
Research note: No people, logos, or readable brands are visible, but building identity, property status, and copyright licensing should still be reviewed before publication.
Research search match: Searches this may match include 1952 San Francisco 8mm skyline, vintage water tower footage, mid-century urban building cutaway, and home movie rooftop view.
Archive pairing path: Pair first with adjacent shots from the same reel, then other 1952 San Francisco exteriors, then broader vintage urban architecture or rooftop utility footage.

Still Frames From This Clip

1952 San Francisco home-movie frame showing a distant masonry building and elevated water tower through a dark-edged window view. — A rooftop water tower rises above a distant masonry building in a soft, blue-purple 8mm frame.

Distant San Francisco building roofline in 1952 8mm footage, with soft focus, dark borders, and no visible people or signage. — The camera drifts across a large flat-roofed building seen from a high vantage point.

1952 San Francisco 8mm frame with a distant stone or masonry building roofline, pale sky, and blurred lower facade details. — A soft-focus roofline fills the upper frame while the lower facade remains faint and shadowed.

Final 1952 San Francisco home-movie frame showing a distant flat-roofed building under pale sky with soft 8mm color shift. — The view settles on a distant building roofline, framed by dark edges and blue-purple film color.

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