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Arosa Line was the trade name for Compañia Internacional Transportadora. The steamship line bought older ships, sailing Trans-Atlantic and on winter cruises out of New York. Thousands of emigrants came from Europe to Canada and the USA on their four ships. In 1949, the shipowner Rizzi had bought his first ... Read More »

San Francisco’s Fox Theatre was the largest movie palace west of St Louis. A monument to opulence and glamour long gone. There weren’t enough adjectives to describe the movie theater’s magnificence. It drew crowds from the entire Bay Area with premiere movies and stage shows. Kids on dates from San ... Read More »

See Charles Pierce perform one of his famous Bette Davis impersonations. Performing from San Francisco and Los Angeles to New York as a top nightclub act, Pierce was one of the best female impersonators in American theatre history. Pierce was a star for decades, living in San Francisco, starting in ... Read More »

David Bowie, who starred in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, had a long-standing fear of flying. Bowie sailed aboard Cunard’s QE 2, the Italian Line’s Leonardo da Vinci, P&O-Orient Line’s Oronsay and Canberra along with many other ships.   So while other superstars would take the Concorde or ... Read More »

American President Lines was a leader in providing passenger liner services between California, the Far East and Around The World. San Francisco was the company’s headquarters for years, and Bay Area residents, from San Jose to San Raphael, would see their great ships as they headed to work on ferry ... Read More »

Greta Garbo was a Swedish actress during Hollywood’s silent film period and part of its Golden Age. Regarded as one of the greatest and most inscrutable movie stars ever produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Hollywood studio system. She traveled many times onboard the Swedish America Line from New York to Sweden ... Read More »

A sailing day meant excitement for the Alaska Steamship Company liners. Here is the SS Alaska sailing from Seattle in 1952. A look at the final days of the Alaska Steamship Company with a history of the famous organization that provided passenger service to the far north. A fond farewell. ... Read More »

Raymond Lowey’s basic design philosophy was behind the creation of the interiors for Matson’s luxury liner Lurline and modern ticket office in downtown Los Angeles. These were the ultimate in mid-century design for California’s famous steamship line. Raymond Loewy, whose modern concept of everything from fountain pens to airplanes, ships, ... Read More »

This famous liner was the fastest passenger ship on the Pacific when completed in 1930, known as the ‘Queen of the Pacific’, and she was particularly noted for her stunning First Class Art Deco public room interiors.The In 1930 the Canadian Pacific’s trans-pacific service reached its zenith with the introduction ... Read More »

This is the first in a series of blogs on the Mexican railway service. These are scenes of Buena Vista Terminal in Mexico City and school children visiting on a morning sometime in the early 1970s. Buena Vista was built in 1961, replacing the older terminal. It was vast and ... Read More »