If you have ever wondered what life in San Francisco looked like in 1940, you will now have a chance to see it for yourself in incredible detail that reaches only 11 inches tall. The scale model took two years to build but has been missing for decades, until now.

San Francisco is an old, iron safe filled with gold, glory, disaster, and secrets. SFCentric History is a column, by SF writer V. Alexandra de F. Szoenyi, that digs in the vaults of local history and shares the sensational people, places, and things that rocked San Francisco. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera