New Fun With Modern Technology
I am somewhat of a history buff when it comes to my adopted home town. (I grew up in Chicago, but I've lived here a lot longer than I did there.) This is a small city, easy to navigate and small enough to really get to know, and I've enjoyed finding out about neighborhoods and their histories. When calsabon was little and had a doctor's appointment, I'd schedule it for first thing in the morning. (This doctor was very busy and got backed up very quickly, so being the first appointment was the only way of not spending the entire day in his waiting room.) She found these appointments a little depressing, so instead of taking her straight to school, we'd get lunch and then do a little Rochester history trip. We went to the county hospital and looked for the gargoyles. We went to one of Rochester's more historic neighborhoods and looked at a preservation project that was going on at the time, rebuilding the concrete gateways to the street. We drove through Mount Hope Cemetery and found Susan B. Anthony's and Frederick Douglass's graves. We never took a really long time, but it was fun for both of us, and took some of the sting out of periodic doctor's visits.
The library here in town has an online collection of photos, maps and postcards. I look up Rochester photos and postcards on eBay as well. Lately, I've been looking for cityscapes that have their locations noted. I find that city or intersection or building on Google maps, and then use street view to see how much it's changed. Most of what I find (particularly of the downtown area) has changed to the point of no longer being recognizable, although often I can spot a building or a cornice that hasn't fallen to the wrecking ball. It's fun, though, and oddly hypnotic.
One can find postcards, boxes of them, and photos too, in any antique store in town. (Especially if the shop has the word "collectibles" on the sign!) It might be a fun project to pair old postcards and photos with contemporary photos from as much the same vantage point as I can. There is a person in our neighborhood who has done that with local photos; she has a brilliant pair of pictures of a local church. One is the church with the Erie Canal in the foreground, flowing serenely past. The second is the same church from precisely the same angle (she did a great job!) with Interstate 490 flowing serenely past in what was the old canal bed. It's startling. The church hasn't changed at all it seems, but the landscape surely has.
I think the next time we're near Village Gate, I'll have to go flip through some of those old postcards.
The library here in town has an online collection of photos, maps and postcards. I look up Rochester photos and postcards on eBay as well. Lately, I've been looking for cityscapes that have their locations noted. I find that city or intersection or building on Google maps, and then use street view to see how much it's changed. Most of what I find (particularly of the downtown area) has changed to the point of no longer being recognizable, although often I can spot a building or a cornice that hasn't fallen to the wrecking ball. It's fun, though, and oddly hypnotic.
One can find postcards, boxes of them, and photos too, in any antique store in town. (Especially if the shop has the word "collectibles" on the sign!) It might be a fun project to pair old postcards and photos with contemporary photos from as much the same vantage point as I can. There is a person in our neighborhood who has done that with local photos; she has a brilliant pair of pictures of a local church. One is the church with the Erie Canal in the foreground, flowing serenely past. The second is the same church from precisely the same angle (she did a great job!) with Interstate 490 flowing serenely past in what was the old canal bed. It's startling. The church hasn't changed at all it seems, but the landscape surely has.
I think the next time we're near Village Gate, I'll have to go flip through some of those old postcards.