The typewritten notation affixed to the back of the photo reads "View from City Hall in 1878." It is taken from a slight elevation, with the intersections of San Pablo and Telegraph Avenues showing. Most of the buidlings in the photo are two-story, wooden houses, but there are a few buildings that are probably commercial, e.g. the one at center bottom, and those at the center. The streets are of graded dirt. There are two vacant lots, one at the left edge, and another in the right lower corner. Right above the one at the right lower corner there is an outhouse or outbuilding.