I found a book and it has great shots of Chicago in it from various time periods.
I think its real interesting to look the picture of say the street corners at “Six Corners” in Chicago in 1941 and see how much it has (or hasn’t changed since then)
(Six Corners was a big shopping district in it’s day, it is Cicero, Milwuakee, and Iriving Park - Thus the intersection has 'six" corners)
It seems to me evertime I show books like these to people they are like “eh who cares what it used to look like.”
But I don’t know, seeing the trolley tracks and the old subway stations, not to mention the way people dressed and how the same streets look today are interesting to me?
Does anyone else find something like this interesting or is it just “eh, who cares” to you?
Yeah. It’s neat to see a picture of a train station where the 7-11 is now, and the downtown area used to be just a few buildings on a hill along a railroad track.
I find these types of pictures fascinating. Even if it is a city I don’t live in or haven’t lived in.
One of my best friends is an expert in the history of California architecture from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century. I love looking at his pictures of early 20th century Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.
If this really piques your curiosity, you might look into postcards. I collect postcards from my home town and have about 1800 different ones from the 1890s to the present. I like to see the way the city has gradually changed…and the way it has stayed the same. I have, for example, postcards of the same street corner taken every few years for the past 110 years or so. A book could be written on the subtle changes in the stores, the cars (and horses), the clothes, the signs, etc. Fascinating!
I love browsing through old pictures, online or off. The BC Archives has some gems of Victoria, where I live, through the ages.
It doesn’t have to be just “my” town, though. There are some very cool pictures here, and most of them are quite big, so you can look at the people and cars and stuff. (It’s about the “emergence of advertising in America”, but it’s not the billboards that interested me, it was all the other stuff in the pictures.)
I like it a lot, seeing what has changed, what hasn’t.
Even something like looking down on a town is a bit of a trip through time: in the town where my closest relatives live, you can see the arabic streets, the parts that are also medieval but not as twisty, the parts that grew up in different periods starting in the 1960s.
It sort of makes me feel connected to the people and things that went before.
Vancouver is a very young city, so it’s quite remarkable to see photos from very early in the twentieth century, with recognizable urban landmarks juxtaposed with old growth arborial features.
Good timing. I just spent some time in the last month researching old pictures of Edmonton, once I discovered that our public library website had quite a few. I liked figuring out where the buildings where, what’s there now, how much things have changed.
Yes, but the only photos I’ve seen were from the George Reeves biography on Biography (he was born here). The business district (such as it is) is totally different. The orientation has changed – used to be north/south, now it’s east/west–and most of the businesses are gone, some due to fire, a couple were demolished. I love talking to the old folks who’ve seen all the changes.