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For my “Philadelphia: Past and Present” project I chose to focus on Rittenhouse Square. All of the original images I used are courtesy of PhillyHistory.org and most of them are from 1900; the latest image I used is 1936.
I thought this project would be easier because it would require less travel, but I still found it quite difficult because of how much things had changed. The visual cues and landmarks between then and now are COMPLETELY different, and many images required repeated attempts to get the angle as close to the original as possible.
For the first batch of images, I compared the corner of 18th & Walnut from different angles.
Here’s the southeast corner, 1900 vs. today:
It’s a whole other world.
Comparatively, the northwest corner is (relatively) unchanged and retains the original building:
As we move down Walnut, this house and horse of 1900 change:
Across the street, we begin to see signs of the original architecture being altered but maintained, in this image of the Wellington Apartments taken in 1935:
These buildings, viewed from the park, in 1926:
Around the corner on 18th & Walnut is the Holy Trinity Church, once the site of William Frazier in 1900. It’s difficult to tell if the church is still the original building.
The very nature of the roads around Rittenhouse Square has changed; looking south down 19th street, from 1936 to today, we see the roads have changed from brick to cracked asphalt:
This apartment complex, still undergoing construction in 1926, looks similar today. (Unfortunately for the view, the trees of Rittenhouse Square have undergone considerable growth.)
Here, we see that this Penn Apartment complex in 1931, looks similar today. (This shot proved to be the most difficult to replicate; I think I need either a tilt-shift lens or a wider angle.)
This picture of the residential address 1909 Spruce St, a few blocks south of Rittenhouse Square and taken in 1930, also looks relatively similar today, with the key differences being a few more handrails and a few less Ford Model-T’s:
