Photographers of 1870s London Documented Their Disappearing City (hyperallergic.com)

Thank you! Just to note Temple Bar was moved from its original position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Bar,_London

Not nearly the same level of detail but Google Earth has satellite maps of London going back to 1945. In the View menu select Historical Imagery.

There are even what I would call wide angle shots among them. I find that quite impressive considering medium & technology were relatively new.

Same here. The Norwegian site Finn.no has the closest thing I've found, adding released public aerial photos to their map service every now and then. For an example, go to http://kart.finn.no/, find a city and look at the menu node called "Historiske".

I managed to construct something similar as a Google Map of Haiphong, Vietnam, a few years ago, based on images collected from scanned postcards of the French colonial era. https://www.google.com.hk/maps/@20.8611143,106.6734063,15z/d...

Not quite the same detail but with Google Earth you can review historical maps of many cities. In the View menu > Historical Imagery. You can see back to 1943 around Europe - Rome, Naples and Bologna in Italy, Lyon, Bordeaux and Paris in France as well as most major German cities. In the US it's a mixed bag but often until the 50s/70s.

There's a book of John Wesley Powell expedition photos down the Colorado River in 1869, the first time it had been explored through Cataract, Glen, and Grand Canyons. The authors returned a century later to retake the same photos from the exact same vantage points. It appears there are quite a few then and now books available for various other interesting places in the world.

But yes, Street View for the past would be amazing. Maybe a few photogenic cities like London or Paris could organize enough period photos to build a pretty good approximation. Would make a nice History thesis project to organize all the available findable photos for a neighborhood at a particular time.

The book is called _In_The_Footsteps_Of_John_Wesley_Powell_ by Stephens, Shoemaker, and Powell. It appears to be out of print but good libraries should have it and there are used copies online. [0]

[0] http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=&an=steph...

http://www.oldsf.org/ is the closest thing I've seen — designer and developer mapped photos to their relatively accurate location, filterable by year. I've actually been able to find photos of two of the houses/blocks where I've lived (Mission and Lower Haight neighborhoods) dating back 50-100 years.

The optimist in me hopes that Google (or other companies) will archive old streetview data and make it available as a true visual timeline over the next few decades.

street view in google maps has a timeline, in some places almost up to a decade.

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/go-back-in-time-with...

You may be interested in these photos by Camilo José Vergara, where he took pictures of the same building or street over a span of decades:

http://www.messynessychic.com/2016/10/26/for-over-40-years-t...

I thought the same.

The Geroge makes me laugh: if Hemingway drank in every London pub that claims him as a one-time custodian, he'd never have got a day's work done in his life. Same with Dickens. I live up in West London where one pub nearby (The Dove) claims to be the place where "Rule Britannia!" was written (no, it wasn't), and the whole city is full of this jovial nonsense that tourists love.

The George that takes it to a new level by optimistically suggesting Shakespeare would have been a customer.

Cracks me up every time I'm there.

The only one that comes close to it is the Still & Star in "Blood Alley". Threatened with closure the landlord was on BBC London a few months back and he suggested that because it was in the old butchery quarter (it sits on the corner of a street nicknamed "Bloody Alley"), and it was _obvious_ that Jack the Ripper was a butcher, then clearly his pub was Old Jack's regular local.

Old photos are usually metal-on-glass plates, and the plates are usually enormous. They compare very, very favorably with teensy little 35mm films.

This is the unfortunate effect of burning tons of coal every day. The industrial revolution had quite a toll, although we wouldn't be where we are today otherwise.

2008 had nothing to do with anything - this has been going on at the same pace since the 1980's.

The trained eye can see the impact of brick and siding thieves in those photos.

Also, what fool built that red fence in 2011? That's like candy to "recyclers" - just roll it up and sell it as scrap.

Those are really sad photos.

On a similar note, you can do the same with Christchurch, New Zealand. Except that instead of economic downturn, we had several earthquakes instead:

http://www.bradydyer.com/2014/04/pre-post-christchurch-earth...

You don't realise the sheer amount of destruction the earthquakes wrought just from looking at the city in it's current state.