Change From On High

Another experiment contrasting aerial views from different times. This time combining an 1891 bird’s eye view of Seattle with a semi-polygonal version from present-day Google Earth. The 1891 image was rendered by lithographer E.S. Glover for the A.L. Bancroft company in California who specialized in text books and large aerial views of cities up and down the West Coast. These lithographs were somewhat idealized, both for clarity and aesthetic reasons – The perspective is fudged a lot to include both a street grid and the distant scenery. This makes lining up the horizon and landmarks a bit tricky but there is enough overlap using the waterfront and a few landmarks to get reasonably close. It's also possible to appreciate how successive decades of regrades removed a number of the rolling hills that once dominated the landscape of downtown Seattle.