Website: Old San Francisco

12200931257?profile=originalSimilar in concept to HistoryPin, a local San Francisco resident, Dan Vanderkam, has overlaid photos taken from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection onto a Google map of San Francisco to create a searchable, historic database.  The San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, located in the San Francisco History Center, contains photographs and works on paper of San Francisco and California views from 1850 to the present.

To start using Old S.F., just pull the sliders along the top to adjust the date the photos were taken (starting at 1850 and ending at 2000) and then click on one of the red dots to see images from that location. It's a fascinating journey through some of San Francisco's most famous (as well as its most intimate) landmarks - witness the chaos and destruction that followed the 1906 earthquake, or watch the elegant Golden Gate Bridge as its construction slowly creeps across the Bay. It's your own personal time machine to San Francisco - and you're holding the controls.

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Comments

  • Thanks, James, for posting the link. It looks like the beginnings of a really interesting and useful resource. Would be good to see how it develops. Good luck with it, and do keep BPH readers posted ...

  • It's a great concept and very nicely executed.  And wow, so many photos, all seemingly very accurately geocoded.  The one thing it lacks though compared with Historypin (and other sites like What Was There?) is the overlay on Google Street View.

    I recently had a play with the 17,000+ geocoded images in Flickr Commons and have created a dynamic layer for Google Earth and a version for the Layar augmented reality mobile phone app.  Wherever you are in the world you can see all the vintage images closest to you.  It's still in development and needs some tweaks, but you can find details at http://www.whatsthatpicture.com/2011/12/mapping-flickr-commons. Google Maps version coming soon.

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