Friday, January 22, 2010

Statue of Liberty, 1974 & 2006

Living in New Jersey in the 1970s, we got to travel a lot in the Northeast, and from time to time we'd take in the sights of New York City. In summer 1974 we took the boat trip out to the Statue of Liberty, and of course my dad took a number of slides. He and I went up to the crown's observation deck (you can see the spike from the crown in the 6th row of pictures), while my sister and mother hung back. We took the typical family tourist pictures.

Flash forward to Sept. 2006, I took a trip to New York after my sister's wedding, and not having seen the Statue of Liberty since that 1974 trip, I went back and took my own pictures. What I didn't realize at the time was that views of the Statue are so iconic, I ended up taking many similar or nearly identical photos that my dad had taken. There had been some changes in the meantime, including remaking the field at Liberty's back into a paved walkway with a security tent, and of course the loss of the World Trade Center buildings on the Manhattan skyline. In 2006, the statue itself had not been reopened, and we were only allowed up to the top of the base, whereas in 1974 we could go up to the crown.

Here are side-by-side images of the Statue of Liberty 32 years apart (1974 on the left, 2006 on the right).

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Pittsburgh, summer 1977

We used to go visit my dad's parents in Pittsburgh every summer. My dad grew up there, and my grandparents had lived there since the 1950s. The panorama picture is a composite of 4 photos taken from Mt. Washington, on the south side of the river across from downtown. The other pictures include my sister and I at the Three Rivers fountain, Three Rivers Stadium (then home to the Pirates and Steelers), and a couple of Ft. Pitt. Click on the panorama picture to embiggen.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Austin, summer 1983

I took these pictures when my family went up to Austin during the summer of 1983. We checked out the campus of the University of Texas, where I was strongly considering going (and where I ultimately went to college), and went inside the Dobie dorm to check out the views of campus. Freshman year my room had a view of the Tower, on the 9th floor. Downtown is nearly unrecognizable compared to now with all of the construction that has taken place since. These photos and slides start with a view from Mt. Bonnell, then the Capitol Building and downtown, and finally the UT campus.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

New York World's Fair, 1965

The 1964/1965 New York World's Fair opened on April 22, 1964, and ran for two six-month seasons concluding on October 17, 1965. These pictures were taken around August 1965. The fair was in Flushing Meadows, in Queens, NY, near Shea Stadium. Pictures here include General Motors' "Futurama", Sinclair Oil's "Dinoland", the Unisphere, a recreation of a Belgian village (which introduced the Belgian Waffle to the US), Disney's "It's a Small World", and General Electric's "Carousel of Progress" (both of which later moved to Disneyland).

More photos in my flickr set here.

New York City, 1908-1912

Wedding pictures of my paternal great-grandparents. All four came to the US from overseas, and both couples got married in New York City about 100 years ago.

Friday, January 1, 2010

World Trade Center, 1981

We took a day trip from New Jersey into New York City to see the World Trade Center in June 1981. Except for the first one, taken from ground level, the rest were taken from the Top of the World observation deck above the 107th floor of the South Tower. On the second image, you can just make out the signature of George Willig, who climbed the tower in 1977 (click to embiggen, signature is just to the left of the corner). The panorama at the end is of the North Tower (click to embiggen). The final picture is Lower Manhattan and the World Trade Center from the Empire State Building, taken a couple of weeks later.

Washington DC, summer 1965

These slides were taken by my parents on a vacation to Washington DC in summer 1965; they had been married only a year.

Boston, summer 1980

We went to Boston as part of a summer vacation in 1980 which also included Newport, Plymouth, Cape Cod, and Nantucket (which will come eventually).

The first image is a combination of 10 slides showing about 180 degrees from west to north to east, from the John Hancock building. The rest of the photos and slides include the Boston Tea Party ship, Hyannisport, and the USS Constitution.

Click on the panorama image to embiggen.

Somewheres Else

My father and I had a years-long project to scan the family slide and photograph collection. The slides go back to 1965, the photos back to the early 1900s. I thought it might be interesting to show the places we've been, in particular the places that don't exist anymore in the way we photographed them, whether it's the buildings, the cars, the fashion, or whatever.

These are not professional photos, just some people with cameras documenting the sights. We've used a number of methods of scanning images, most of them relatively cheap. The original goal of our scanning project was to see what we have, so that if we later want better copies or reprints we can get those done individually. There are about 6000 slides and scanned photos dating up to 2002, which is when I got my digital camera.

The images here have only been color corrected (to some extent, using Paint Shop Pro) and are presented warts (or wings, or windows) and all.

So here, in no particular order, are pictures from somewheres else.

How to find someone in the 1940 Census

I posted this on Facebook in April 2012, not long after the 1940 Census was released. I rediscovered this post in November 2020 and figured ...