Tagged: Historical Photographs
This Week
A weekly round-up of my favorite preservation related stories from around the web and in the news. Click on the title of each story to jump through to the original article/blog post.
Long Lost Van Gogh Painting Discovered – NBC News
Image via NBC News
“The Van Gogh Museum says it has identified a long-lost Vincent Van Gogh painting that spent years in a Norwegian attic and was believed to be by another painter. It is the first full-size canvas by the Dutch master discovered since 1928. “Sunset at Montmajour” depicts trees, bushes and sky, painted with Van Gogh’s familiar thick brush strokes.” How exciting!
Amazon Rain Forest Was Garden City – The Telegraph
“Explorers have long sought lost cities of the Amazon, now almost entirely obscured by forest. Today it turns out that the “garden cities”, which date back 1500 years, were too spread out to make sense of on foot. Assisted by satellite imagery, researchers have spent more than a decade uncovering and mapping the lost and obscured communities to show they held more than 1000 people each and were once large and complex enough to be considered “urban” as the term is commonly applied to medieval European and ancient Greek communities”
The 8 Best Phony Storefronts/Building Facades in NYC – Scouting NYC
This townhouse is actually a subway ventilator and emergency exit! Image via Scouting NYC
Storefronts and building facades may not always be what they seem. In New York City, they sometimes hide super hip “speak easy” type night clubs, bars, or in one case – a subway ventilator/emergency exit. Do you have anything like this in your town? Rumor has it that the proprietress of the Galt House in Louisville plans a speak easy accessed by a phone booth near Whiskey Row!
V is for Viewshed – Preservation in Pink
The viewshed of historic downtown Montpelier, VT. Image via PiP
In preservation, the viewshed is the view to and from a historic property. “Why does viewshed matter? It relates to the setting, association, and feeling of a historic property, which are three of the seven aspects of integrity, as per the National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Change the viewshed and you’ve altered the integrity, and quite possibly the significance of that historic property.”
9 Photos of Grisly Vintage Crime Scenes on Today’s NYC Streets – Gizmodo
On March 19, 1942 Edna Egbert fought with police after she climbed on her Dean Street ledge in Brooklyn. Image via Gizmodo
“Photographer and historian of the New York Press Photographers Association Marc Hermann dove into the New York Daily News archive to find historic crime scenes, and mashed them up with photographs of the same locations today. The resulting images provide a haunting window into the tragic events of the past, like a Noir film playing out in real time on an empty city block.”
This Week
A weekly round-up of my favorite preservation related stories from around the web and in the news. Click on the title of each story to jump through to the original article/blog post.
The Inspiring Story of Hamburg, NY – Better! Cities & Towns
Image via Better! Cities & Towns
An upstate New York village defied the Department of Transportation and created a human-scale Main Street that restored community to a downtrodden downtown. the New York DOT proposed 12-foot travel lanes — the same width as Interstate highways — and other design details that are standard for urban arterials all across the US. The village rejected the state’s proposal and suggested an alternative. “Hamburg’s Main Street was redesigned to slow vehicles, a technique known as traffic calming. Two lanes, instead of the three that had been planned, were built, and the lanes’ width was shrunk from 12 feet — highway-size ribbons that invite drivers to go fast — to 10 feet. That created more room for trees; on-street parking, which is good for businesses; and “safety lanes,” which provide room for drivers to open car doors safely and also serve as de facto bicycle lanes.” Since the redesign, car accidents on the road of dropped by 66% and “business owners, inspired by the new road, spent a total of $7 million on 33 building projects.”
Hawaii Before Statehood – Life
Washing hung out to dry, Hawaii, 1959. Image via LIFE
Fifty-four years ago this week, Hawaii was admitted into the Union. LIFE.com presents a slide show of beautiful color photographs from 1959, the year Hawaii officially became America’s 50th state. In a March 1959 article, “Hawaii — Beauty, Wealth, Amiable People,” for which these pictures were made, LIFE painted a largely rosy picture of the place.
The Stahl House photographed by Julius Shulman. Image via Modern Capital DC
‘The Las Vegas Tapes’: Remarkable footage of Sin City from 1976 – Dangerous Minds
Las Vegas post card via Danger Minds
“In 1976 Scott Jacobs and Valjean McLenighan decided to do a video documentary of life in Las Vegas, and the resultant 29-minute movie was made with the title The Las Vegas Tapes. To accomplish their goal they chose the simplest strategy imaginable—they simply went around with a video camera and asked people questions….There are no great revelations herein, merely a pungent documentation of Fremont Street before it became the “other” strip in Las Vegas, which today is dominated by Caesar’s Palace and the Luxor and that huge neon Paris balloon.”
Did You Know?
The National Register of Historic Places has a Flickr photo stream with over 10,000 historical and recent photographs of historic places. It includes sets of photos that cover a range of topics including Women’s History, American Indian, and Historic Hotels, as well as sets for individual states.
Just a warning, if you click this link, you may lose your afternoon! What a great/fun resource!
This Week
A weekly round-up of my favorite preservation related stories from around the web and in the news. Click on the title of each story to jump through to the original article/blog post.
Never-before-seen photos from 100 years ago tell vivid story of gritty New York City – Daily Mail
“Building roads: Workers lay bricks to pave 28th Street in Manhattan on October 2, 1930.” Image via Daily Mail
“Almost a million images of New York and its municipal operations have been made public for the first time on the internet… Culled from the Municipal Archives collection of more than 2.2 million images going back to the mid-1800s, the 870,000 photographs feature all manner of city oversight — from stately ports and bridges to grisly gangland killings.” This photo database has the potential to be an amazing resource for researchers! Not only will it be easy to find images of buildings and streets, but the photos also contain clues about how people lived: the food they ate, the prices they paid, the clothes they wore, how they moved from place to place, how they entertained themselves, and on and on! And for the non-researcher, they are just fun to look at! Click on the link to see more images!
Put A Bird On It – True Adventures of an Art Addict
40,000 Year Old Rock Art Site Depicts Extinct Bird. Image via News Junkie Post
Artist Sharmon Davidson explores the current cultural obsession with birds in art and its deep historical roots. Did you know that what may be the earliest rock pictograph ever uses a bird image?! Click on the link to learn more!
A Man Full of Trouble – Indiegogo
Image via A Man Full of Trouble
You may have seen this quirky dark comedy on Bricks + Mortar’s Facebook page yesterday. The film, Temple University student Michael Johnston’s thesis project, follows the story of a suicidal Alexander Hamilton re-enactor as he’s entangled in a love affair and gears up for a duel. According to Johnston, he wanted to make a film “that explored and expressed Philadelphia’s history and architecture.” To that end, the film is using several area locations for shooting, including the Woodlands Mansion and Cemetery. Shooting fees and donations raised at the film’s premier party/fundraiser at the mansion will benefit on-going restoration of the National Historic Landmark! Check out the link to learn more about A Man Full of Trouble and how you can help Johnston and his team make this film and restore Woodland Mansion!
The Lavish Sets of the Great Gatsby– Architectural Digest
Jay Gatsby’s opulent ballroom. Image via Architectural Digest
Look at the photograph above… do I really need to say more? Click through for more photos of Gatbsy’s mansion, the Buchanan’s house, Nick’s cottage and more!
Bricks + Mortar 