Photographers of 1870s London Documented Their Disappearing City

http://hyperallergic.com/299912/the-photographers-of-1870s-london-who-documented-their-disappearing-city/

by brudgers • 10 years ago

204 33 10 years ago

DanBC• 10 years ago

I'm not good with Google Maps, and I don't know London that well, but I think these are the locations of some of the images.

Warwick Lane, London: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5158118,-0.1005718,3a,75y,...

St bartholomew the Great and Clothfair: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/St+Bartholomew+the+Great...

This is Aldgate High Street, which is I think where the "Old Houses Aldgate" is taken: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5139372,-0.0756649,3a,75y,...

http://pubshistory.com/LondonPubs/Aldgate/TurksHead.shtml

I think this is the closest street view can get to The King's Head yard, Southwark: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/The+Old+Kings+Head/@51.5...

St Mary's Axe: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/golden+axe+st+mary's+ax...

Temple Bar: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Temple+Bar/@51.5140487,-...

arel• 10 years ago

Thank you! Just to note Temple Bar was moved from its original position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Bar,_London

glenneroo2• 10 years ago

Not nearly the same level of detail but Google Earth has satellite maps of London going back to 1945. In the View menu select Historical Imagery.

leonroy• 10 years ago

These photographs appear in an outstanding book 'Lost London, 1870-1945' by Philip Davies.

I bought a copy the week it came out at RRP of $50 odd. It's since dropped to less than $20 on Amazon US and UK. Well worth it up if you're a fan of this wonderful, old city.

tempodox2• 10 years ago

There are even what I would call wide angle shots among them. I find that quite impressive considering medium & technology were relatively new.

fudged71• 10 years ago

Do you think the wide photos might have been taken using a slitscan technique?

ghaff• 10 years ago

I often wish I could see a "Streetview" from 10, 20, 30, 40, etc. years ago. It would be interesting not only in cities, but even to see how areas outside of cities morphed over time. Of course there are examples but, especially when taking a photo cost real money, there wasn't a lot of systematic documentation of mundane street scenes.

There are some examples here from NYC http://petapixel.com/2014/04/04/pictures-ny-storefronts-docu... but this sort of thing is uncommon.

chha• 10 years ago

Same here. The Norwegian site Finn.no has the closest thing I've found, adding released public aerial photos to their map service every now and then. For an example, go to http://kart.finn.no/, find a city and look at the menu node called "Historiske".

contingencies2• 10 years ago

I managed to construct something similar as a Google Map of Haiphong, Vietnam, a few years ago, based on images collected from scanned postcards of the French colonial era. https://www.google.com.hk/maps/@20.8611143,106.6734063,15z/d...

aptwebapps• 10 years ago

I don't see any images when I click the markers.

glenneroo2• 10 years ago

Not quite the same detail but with Google Earth you can review historical maps of many cities. In the View menu > Historical Imagery. You can see back to 1943 around Europe - Rome, Naples and Bologna in Italy, Lyon, Bordeaux and Paris in France as well as most major German cities. In the US it's a mixed bag but often until the 50s/70s.

WildUtah• 10 years ago

There's a book of John Wesley Powell expedition photos down the Colorado River in 1869, the first time it had been explored through Cataract, Glen, and Grand Canyons. The authors returned a century later to retake the same photos from the exact same vantage points. It appears there are quite a few then and now books available for various other interesting places in the world.

But yes, Street View for the past would be amazing. Maybe a few photogenic cities like London or Paris could organize enough period photos to build a pretty good approximation. Would make a nice History thesis project to organize all the available findable photos for a neighborhood at a particular time.

The book is called _In_The_Footsteps_Of_John_Wesley_Powell_ by Stephens, Shoemaker, and Powell. It appears to be out of print but good libraries should have it and there are used copies online. [0]

[0] http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=&an=steph...

robertnealan2• 10 years ago

http://www.oldsf.org/ is the closest thing I've seen — designer and developer mapped photos to their relatively accurate location, filterable by year. I've actually been able to find photos of two of the houses/blocks where I've lived (Mission and Lower Haight neighborhoods) dating back 50-100 years.

The optimist in me hopes that Google (or other companies) will archive old streetview data and make it available as a true visual timeline over the next few decades.

questionr• 10 years ago

street view in google maps has a timeline, in some places almost up to a decade.

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/go-back-in-time-with...

robertnealan2• 10 years ago

Aha! I remembered seeing something a year or so back but thought it was just a proof of concept by an individual, not officially baked into Google Maps. Just took a look and it's definitely there, though unless you know where to look it's a bit buried in the interface.

twic• 10 years ago

You may be interested in these photos by Camilo José Vergara, where he took pictures of the same building or street over a span of decades:

http://www.messynessychic.com/2016/10/26/for-over-40-years-t...

jbuzbee2• 10 years ago

The view of King’s Head Inn, reminded me of "The George" which against all odds, is still up and running since at least the 1500's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_George_Inn,_Southwark

PaulRobinson• 10 years ago

I thought the same.

The Geroge makes me laugh: if Hemingway drank in every London pub that claims him as a one-time custodian, he'd never have got a day's work done in his life. Same with Dickens. I live up in West London where one pub nearby (The Dove) claims to be the place where "Rule Britannia!" was written (no, it wasn't), and the whole city is full of this jovial nonsense that tourists love.

The George that takes it to a new level by optimistically suggesting Shakespeare would have been a customer.

Cracks me up every time I'm there.

The only one that comes close to it is the Still & Star in "Blood Alley". Threatened with closure the landlord was on BBC London a few months back and he suggested that because it was in the old butchery quarter (it sits on the corner of a street nicknamed "Bloody Alley"), and it was _obvious_ that Jack the Ripper was a butcher, then clearly his pub was Old Jack's regular local.

jbuzbee2• 10 years ago

Yeah, there's no way to prove these claims. But since The George is near the Globe and was active in Shakespeare's day, it's fun to think he might have had a pint or two right where you're sitting!

OJFord• 10 years ago

These ~145yo photographs are incredible.

Is it 'just' the carbon printing? I'm surprised at the resolution (not to mention preservation) - what is it that makes them so.. 'good'?

honkhonkpants• 10 years ago

Old photos are usually metal-on-glass plates, and the plates are usually enormous. They compare very, very favorably with teensy little 35mm films.

jpatokal• 10 years ago

Bit of an aside, but it's striking how thick the smog is in all these pictures, you can see how everything fades off within meters:

http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/londonre...

Reminds me quite a bit of Delhi today:

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=delhi+smog&tbm=isch

FreeFull• 10 years ago

This is the unfortunate effect of burning tons of coal every day. The industrial revolution had quite a toll, although we wouldn't be where we are today otherwise.

gilgongo• 10 years ago

Interesting how the use of woodwork and things like shiplap was so prevalent. Walking around these places today, you are surrounded by stone, concrete and glass. Such an extremely different experience.

rmason• 10 years ago

There's a Detroiter who has contrasted Google and Bing street view photos showing Detroit blocks from 2007-2016. You can't really understand the magnitude of how the 2008 recession hurt Detroit unless you see his photographic documentation of it.

http://www.goobingdetroit.com/

hellofunk2• 10 years ago

Those are really sad photos.

elcapitan• 10 years ago

Ugh, creepy. Reminds me of season 4 of "The Wire" (where people get killed by organized crime and the bodies hidden in abandoned houses).

There was a also a recent Planet Money episode on knocking down abandoned buildings: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/08/26/491490744/episo...

wuschel• 10 years ago

And shocking! I have never been in Detroit before, and followed the crisis through the distorted lens of media. this kind of imagery is a source for visual understanding of the impact of the crisis.

toomanybeersies• 10 years ago

On a similar note, you can do the same with Christchurch, New Zealand. Except that instead of economic downturn, we had several earthquakes instead:

http://www.bradydyer.com/2014/04/pre-post-christchurch-earth...

You don't realise the sheer amount of destruction the earthquakes wrought just from looking at the city in it's current state.

gumby• 10 years ago

I am struck by how many of these pictures included broken windows. A nice signal of the degree to which the Industrial Revolution really was a revolution in pricing

Photographers of 1870s London Documented Their Disappearing City

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