Then and Now

Pierce

Pierce

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Playing around with the BPL's flickr photos, google streetview, and photoshop I came up with these gifs below. If you have the program [and a passing familiarity with it] it is a fairly straightforward procedure to make these, and a cool way to ground some of these photos. Obviously the vantagepoints on google are limited so I have to stretch and tweak photos to get certain buildings to kinda lineup, while other areas will naturally not line up at all. Anyway I plan to make more of these in the future, and invite others to do so and lets post them in this thread.

Old State House
5371281895_38db0abe2b_o.gif


Milk Street
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Remember when Boston had pedestrians and we didn't have one-story buildings in the heart of downtown?

Whoops--I just realized the sepia-toned shots were the "then"...
 
hahaha, i came back here after posting and i totally have a headache too now...

i will slow them down tomorrow and repost
 
The reason you don't see any people is because back then you had to expose the camera for a long time. Look very close and you will see the "ghosts" of many people walking around.
 
Centennial Lunch Room - inducted to Ye ArchBoston Hall of Shame, 1910.
 
The state house used to look like some tacky general store of an old wild west town?
 
^^After a group from Chicago offered to buy it and move it out west.
Edit:
...or maybe that was a myth? Hmmm.
from Wikipedia:

Period of commercial use 1841-1881
After Boston's city hall left, the whole building was rented out for commercial use. This had been the case once before, in the interim between the State House period and the City Hall period. Occupants included tailors, clothing merchants, insurance agents, railroad line offices, and more. As many as fifty businesses used the building at once.[10] The interior was rebuilt in 1748, after a fire in 1747 (the brick walls of the 1712-13 building survived the fire).[11]

The Bostonian Society and the museum 1881?present
In 1881, in response to plans for the possible demolition of the building due to real estate potential, The Bostonian Society was formed to preserve and steward the Old State House. In 1881-1882, restorations were conducted by George A. Clough.[12] In 1882, replicas of the lion and unicorn statues were placed atop the East side of the building, after the originals that had been burned in 1776.[13] On the West side, the building sports a statue of an eagle, in recognition of the Old State House's connection to American history.
Click to expand...

edit again:

Per the ever-reputable(??) www.boston-discovery-guide.com:
Later in the century, the building became more and more of a public eyesore as its commercial occupants plastered the exterior brick, which had been painted a fairly ugly tan color, with posters and billboard advertisements.

Bostonians called for it to be dismantled. After all, it'd been renovated so many times that it could hardly be called "historic."

Just as sentiment veered toward demolition in 1881, the City of Chicago offered to buy the building and move it to the shores of Lake Michigan. Finally, Bostonians realized that they might lose a precious part of the city's history.

Thank you, Chicago!

Demolition discussions halted. A group of local citizens organized what they called the Bostonian Society, dedicated to the purpose of preserving Boston history and making it accessible to people today.
Click to expand...
 
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erikyow said:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/gallery/Boston_then_and_now/?p1=News_links

boston.com has a series of Then and Now photos.
Click to expand...


If any Globe staffers want pointers on how to line up photos, I do an hour session for $50.

Yeesh, I appreciate them putting this up but it's really half assed. The NY Times uses that same slider technology and their photos line up amazingly, but when the Globe employs it they take photos that are approximate and then just seem to slap them together. It's SO close to really having some pop, but it falls short. Typical Boston institution though, emulate what New York does well but detail-blind.
.
 
belmont square said:
Remember when Boston had pedestrians and we didn't have one-story buildings in the heart of downtown?

Whoops--I just realized the sepia-toned shots were the "then"...
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's interesting to see that in both cases, the now is much more densely urban. Van's point about pedestrians notwithstanding, the newer shots have a lot more physical structure in them.
 
What is the process called to do a "then and now" with photos, either the first way of just going back and forth or using a slider like the Globe did? I don't want to buy Photoshop but I winder if Pixelmator has this or perhaps there's free software on the Internet?
 
Get imaging software that allows you to make animated .gifs.

I don't know how the Globe makes those slider things, but imagine it involves Flash, which is more complicated.
 
Boston from an air balloon, circa 1860 and same (general) view, current day, although I can't be sure. I couldn't find one landmark that matched up (damn 1872 fire!). I think that's the Old South Meeting House upper left but the windows look different between the two.

boston_then_and_now_zps03a1be16.png


Eh, looking at this now, it's not really that interesting b/c the sizes are so small.

For a bigger version of the 1860 map, click here:

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/north_end2_zps8fa63aae.jpg
 
Wiki says the Tontine Crescent was taken by the city, and razed in 1858. The buildings that replaced the Crescent and adjacent structures were all destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872.

The fire took the east side of Washington from Milk to almost Bedford St., it narrowly missed consuming both Boston Latin and Boston English, both on Bedford St., near Washington. And it went all the way to the harbor, destroying Russia Wharf and several wharves to the south of Russia wharf.

There was another major fire the following Memorial Day on Washington St., nearer Essex, burning down to Boylston, and consuming several buildings on Boylston. (From 389 to 431 Washington, and from 15 to 23 Boylston.)
 
JohnAKeith said:
Boston from an air balloon, circa 1860 and same (general) view, current day, although I can't be sure. I couldn't find one landmark that matched up (damn 1872 fire!). I think that's the Old South Meeting House upper left but the windows look different between the two.

boston_then_and_now_zps03a1be16.png


Eh, looking at this now, it's not really that interesting b/c the sizes are so small.

For a bigger version of the 1860 map, click here:

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/north_end2_zps8fa63aae.jpg
Click to expand...

Coincidentally, someone posted this exact same comparison on their blog: http://blog.davidad.net/post/47278329434/recreating-the-oldest-aerial-photo

The post also has a link to the Smithsonian blog stating that this is the world's oldest surviving aerial photograph.
 
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