Comments on: New York Changing

New York Changing

stbalbach — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:09:41 -0800

New York Changing. Rephotographs from then and now.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:12:07 -0800

".. then and now" (the photos)

By: deafmute

deafmute — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:34:17 -0800

I live for these kinds of photo comparisons. Great post.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:40:03 -0800

Great post! I really find it fascinating, not how much has changed, but just how little!

By: arse_hat

arse_hat — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:42:24 -0800

Thanks stbalbach. This is great.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:43:12 -0800

[this is good] I love Changing New York- it's the kind of coffee table book that every guest winds up looking through.

By: ursus_comiter

ursus_comiter — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:47:23 -0800

This one seems to have been posed to me. [this is all good]

By: contessa

contessa — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:54:18 -0800

Are my eyes playing tricks on me? What is this peculiar building that looks like it has a front, but no sides?

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:57:24 -0800

so little has changed--it's really amazing.

By: plemeljr

plemeljr — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:11:13 -0800

Thanks - it is pretty amazing that so much has changed but so much has remained the same.

By: tomierna

tomierna — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:23:02 -0800

This peculiar building. Same picture, with text details.

By: NewBornHippy

NewBornHippy — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:30:45 -0800

I like the kind of cleanup they did around the house on this one.

By: Democritus

Democritus — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:33:17 -0800

Those pictures are great. Wow, that building is interesting! It really does look like a movie set from that angle. There was a similar "Now and Then" website done on San Francisco but I can't seem to find it now.

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:41:54 -0800

I am such a sucker for these photos. Something about being able to follow the continuum of history makes these things very comforting. Thanks, stpalbach, for finding this. I'll be here a lot for a while.

By: knave

knave — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:42:42 -0800

More evidence of our safety-obsessed culture. stbalbach, thanks for a great link. I agree with the sentiment that it's really amazing how little has changed in 70 years.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:53:29 -0800

I like the kind of cleanup they did around the house on this one. Funny, I hated that.

By: saladin

saladin — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:53:38 -0800

Contessa - I was in that building a couple of weeks ago... it's just a very thin triangle; the angle that the photo is taken at makes it look like it's just one giant wall with windows. The thin point of the triangle is taken up by a really bizarre and twisty stairwell... pretty cool.

By: saladin

saladin — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:53:51 -0800

p.s. - awesome post, thanks

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:55:23 -0800

I want this book.

By: Hegemonic

Hegemonic — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:20:10 -0800

Democritus, I think you're looking for Vertigo: Then and Now, which rephotographs many of the San Francisco locations shown in Vertigo.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:32:51 -0800

Such great stuff. Does anyone else find themselves wishing for several more layers of history? I'd love to see the same spot three or four decades in a row, for example.

By: Creosote

Creosote — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:41:28 -0800

Several years ago, the University of Arizona Press published Grand Canyon, A Century of Change, a rephotography book that published photos reproducing ones taken over 100 years earlier on a Colorado River expedition. (Unfortunately you'll have to get ahold of the book; I don't think any selections are online.) As I recall, I attended a presentation to the Arizona Native Plant Society by the author before the book was published in which he noted how useful the project has been to plant ecology studies, because in surprisingly many cases the exact same plant or plant clump (prickly pear cacti, creosote bushes) appears in both photos, and it's possible to chart survival percentages by species for recognizable foreground plants.

By: wadefranklin

wadefranklin — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:43:31 -0800

I, too, love this kind of stuff. Unlike most sites of this type, this one seems to focus more on how things have stayed the same, rather than how they have changed.

By: HifiToaster

HifiToaster — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:54:57 -0800

Great stuff - I love these kinds of sites. I'll agree with wadefranklin that this seems to show how little things have changed. A friend of mine did a similar thing in Chicago, where he took an architecture book from the forties and tried to take as many shots in the same locations. Most of shots showed how incredibly different the city is now, sixty years later. Many of the buildings were totally gone (or the background buildings were gone or obscured by newer buildings).

By: JBennett

JBennett — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:59:36 -0800

Thanks for the link. I would love to have the option of a roll-over viewer that toggled both images. As for our "safety-obsessed culture"... I walked over the Manhattan Bridge a week ago, and between the trains and the drop, I can see how this was necessary. I would rather see a nicer fence that matched the bridge a bit, but it gets windy up there, and it's a long way down.

By: Turtles all the way down

Turtles all the way down — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:00:33 -0800

Neato! I'm heartened that the comments in this thread suggest I'm not the only one who's entertained the crazy romantic notion of jumping back 50 years and wandering around town.

By: baphomet

baphomet — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:01:46 -0800

This is a fabulous post- NYC is an incredible city and these comparisons of how the city has evolved over the past 50+ years are really provocative. Thanks for the great find, stbalbach.

By: OhPuhLeez

OhPuhLeez — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:08:03 -0800

Great link - thank you. I grew up in NYC on the Upper West Side, and the one thing i realize every time I go home to visit is that I spent very little time looking up when I lived there. Seems odd, doesn't it, to live in a city with such incredible architecture, the majority of which is way over your head (in more ways than one) and to never actually look at it? These pictures are beautiful - and when I get home for the holidays tomorrow I will definitely be looking up.

By: argybarg

argybarg — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:15:09 -0800

What impresses me about these is the degree of fanaticism in getting the "now" photographs to exactly match the "then" photographs, down to precise framing, focal length, etc. In so many of these sorts of photographs, the two are within ten feet or so and, oh well, that's good enough. But if they're perfect, the eye can relax and pick out precisely the details that are minutely different. Also, you get the feeling of seeing, not just the same building, but the exact same viewing point, sixty-odd years later.

By: Turtles all the way down

Turtles all the way down — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:27:39 -0800

Not only that, argybarg, time of day as well!

By: loquax

loquax — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:29:13 -0800

This is fantastic, thanks. What's going on here?

By: liam

liam — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:37:23 -0800

8th avenue looking north from 14th street, from 1898 to 2004.

By: sharpener

sharpener — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:58:58 -0800

I, too, was struck by how little had changed in many of the photographs. The bread store was particularly cool, as some the bread even looked exactly the same. Great post!

By: sacre_bleu

sacre_bleu — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 13:05:58 -0800

I want this book. posted by chicobangs at 1:55 PM EST on November 22 Ask and ye shall receive.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 13:21:11 -0800

What's going on here? Giuseppe Garibaldi is one of history's greatest guerilla fighters. He led revolutions on two continents. It looks like they tore down that butt-ugly neoclassical crap to allow for actual preservation of the building in New York at which Garibaldi quartered. As a tangent, does any one know if Garibaldi square in Mexico city is named after Giuseppe Garibaldi?

By: loquax

loquax — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 13:26:12 -0800

Thanks mr_roboto - really interesting. That memorial almost looked photoshopped.

By: JBennett

JBennett — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 13:49:03 -0800

This post reminded me of a recent slide show put on by This American Life's Ira Glass and cartoonist Chris Ware. You can see a preview video on the linked page: http://www.thislife.org/dvd/ Their story deals with the changing urban landscape of Chicago, focusing on the buildings of Louis Sullivan. Ware handles the simultaneous presentation of what stands on one spot and what once stood on that same spot perfectly. If you can find this DVD, I highly recommend it. Hopefully, once the disk is out of print, they will post it on the TAL website in full.

By: redfisch

redfisch — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 15:13:45 -0800

This was a great post! The same angle of the sun, 65+ years later! I really like the idea that a particular site has remained almost unchanged in all that time - knowing, of course, that if you were to look ten degrees right or left, it might be very different.

By: DakotaPaul

DakotaPaul — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 16:05:30 -0800

There was a similar "Now and Then" website done on San Francisco but I can't seem to find it now. There's a "then and now" book for San Francisco, too.

By: OhPuhLeez

OhPuhLeez — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 16:07:39 -0800

JBennett, I saw the Ware/Glass show at UCLA - it was one of the most memorable evenings of performance I've ever experienced. Simply lovely. Thanks for the link - I'd love to own that on DVD!

By: equipoise

equipoise — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:51:06 -0800

Thanks for a great link. Interesting to see how many things have stayed the same, but the cars have gotten so much uglier. Sad to think about how this one has changed again...

By: goofyfoot

goofyfoot — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:53:22 -0800

I loved touring the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (in real time and space, that is; can't vouch for the online version).

By: Cedric

Cedric — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 22:27:16 -0800

equipoise, that's exactly the photo I wanted to comment on. The 1935 version. It stopped me in my tracks, mesmorized. I want to see New York so bad. Excellent post.

By: erratic frog

erratic frog — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 23:42:18 -0800

Wow, really neat post and super photos! It's so interesting to see the changes throughout the years.