About

Some of my earliest memories are of sitting with my family and friends in our darkened living room while my father manually inserted one slide after the other into our projector (we didn’t have the luxury of a carousel). Rather than finding this tedious (as most normal kids would), I was fascinated by these images. To me, they were more than snapshots of vacations and family outings; they were glimpses into the past.

As I grew older, I would occasionally see an old photograph of a street or building. Some of the scenes were familiar, while some tree-lined dirt roads had long since been paved and developed. I thought that someone should compare these vintage scenes with the modern views.

I got tired of waiting, so I decided to do it myself.

I began searching for old photographs in college. I found some in the college library’s special collections. Since it was in Los Angeles, California, I didn’t think I would have much luck in finding the same vantage points. However, I took what I could find and set out to determine the exact location from where those photographs were taken sometimes 80 years before. There was more from the past in Los Angeles than I realized.

Since then, I have researched photographs from sources all over the country. Most of my vintage views come from the Library of Congress. I’ve also utilized images from the National Archives, city libraries, county libraries, state libraries, and other sources.

I have traveled the country and as I do so, I search for the locations that I have found in vintage photographs. I try to match the same view using landmarks from the old views that still stand and take the identical modern view.