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PhillyHistory Now Available on Field Trip

2014_05_16_FieldTripApp_PhillyHistoryWe’re excited to announce that select materials from PhillyHistory will now be accessible from your smartphone through the Field Trip app developed by NianticLabs at Google. Field Trip is designed to help you find and explore interesting locations in the world. With information on historical places and events, architecture, art and museums, and much more, Field Trip serves as a guide to the hidden history and culture all around us.

Want to learn more about the many historical events that have occurred in Philadelphia?  Curious about the history of the buildings and places that you walk by every day? The tens of thousands of images on PhillyHistory.org have long provided a view into the city’s past with the stories behind the images told through posts on the PhillyHistory Blog. The Field Trip app includes selected images and articles from the PhillyHistory Blog that are connected to specific locations throughout the city. If you have the Field Trip app on your phone, you can read content from the PhillyHistory Blog about the history of locations near you. If you have notifications and location services turned on, you’ll even receive alerts when you pass a building or intersection connected to a story on PhillyHistory.

The Field Trip app is available for both iPhones and Android devices at no cost. After downloading the app, users can select from several fields of interest and view stories and images connected to that topic by clicking on the markers on the map. PhillyHistory falls under the “Historic Places & Events” category which are shown as pale orange square markers on the map. Click on a marker to see an overview of the story of that location and then click the top bar to view the full article and images. If you’d like to read more from the PhillyHistory Blog, click the “Full Article” button at the bottom of the page to view more info on the blog or click “PhillyHistory” to visit the website.

We hope you’ll explore PhillyHistory on the Field Trip app and discover the amazing history surrounding us here in Philadelphia!

2014_05_16_FieldTripApp_PhillyHistory2

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PhillyHistory Now on Twitter!

We’re excited to announce that the PhillyHistory team is now on Twitter! A microblogging site, Twitter lets users post messages that are 140 characters or less. Many libraries, archives, and museums have Twitter accounts and use them as a way to share information about their institutions and respond to questions from the public.

Follow the PhillyHistory Team on Twitter at @phillyhistory

We’re hoping to use our Twitter account as a way to give you a glimpse of the behind the scenes work of the PhillyHistory team. We’ll be posting news about PhillyHistory projects as well as letting you know about interesting history related events, news, and exhibitions happening in the area. Around lunchtime each day, we will also be posting our PhillyHistory Photo of the Day” – an image that caught our eyes or that we thought deserved a little bit more attention.

If you are a Twitter user, you can follow or message us at @phillyhistory. Not on Twitter? You can still read our posts at http://twitter.com/#!/phillyhistory

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Selecting Images for Augmented Reality


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Work continues on the PhillyHistory.org augmented reality project, and we’re having fun testing and tweaking the project to make it as useful and enjoyable as possible. While the software developers write code and discuss spatial issues (including geometry and the calculation of angles at one point), we’re busy with our own projects over at the City Archives.

As Hillary mentioned in her last blog post, the augmented reality application will provide access to almost every image in PhillyHistory.org that is connected to a location – a total of nearly 90,000 images. From those 90,000 images, we’ve selected 500 photos to receive a bit of special attention. Each image has been “pinned” in 3D space so that it’s easier to see how the angle and view shown in the photo match the current landscape. The result will be a group of images that are oriented properly, meaning that the building in the photo lines up with the same building seen through your smartphone. Hopefully, this should prevent you from having to dramatically maneuver the phone to align the images. Selecting the photos was both overwhelming and gratifying as we got to spend some time exploring the huge collection of images. For more information on the image selection process, read “Something New in Your Neighborhood: Augmented Reality.”


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Choosing 500 photos wasn’t the last curatorial decision we had to make though. We also needed to select twenty images for which we would provide historical information about the places and activities shown in the photos as well as links to additional resources. To select those images, we teamed up with Dr. Charlene Mires and Dr. Howard Gillette, two of the editors of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, and Dr. Amy Hillier, the project director for Mapping the DuBois Philadelphia Negro. Together with researcher and writer, Doreen Skala, and the rest of the PhillyHistory.org team, this advisory group selected images that touched on a few of the memorable historic locations, people, and events in Philadelphia history. The selected photos cover a variety of topics and locations. An image of the Italian Market in 1954 and another of Gimbels Department Store in 1966 connect to upcoming Encyclopedia essays on the history of the Italian Market or Center City department stores. A photo of Engine House #11 relates to events in African-American history, and an image of high school students visiting a pretzel vendor gives insight into the history of formal schooling in Philadelphia.

While these twenty selected images certainly do not cover the entirety of Philadelphia’s rich history, we hope they will provide more details about a few events and locations. Due to the small screen size available on a mobile phone, we had to limit the text to only a short paragraph. With each image, however, we also included a list of sources and links to possible sites for more information. We hope you enjoy the chance to learn more about these amazing photographs!

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Something New in Your Neighborhood: Augmented Reality


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One of the coolest features of PhillyHistory.org is the ability to browse historical photographs alongside the contemporary Google street view, enabling users to meld past and present at the click of a mouse.   But what would that feature look like in real time – not through a computer screen but rather on a smart phone via an application that overlays a historic image on the modern landscape? Through a combination of the GPS and camera technologies available on today’s smart phones, a prototype augmented reality application for PhillyHistory.org will provide users with the opportunity to experience the site’s archival collections in this truly unique way. Currently, we plan on making nearly every image in the PhillyHistory database that is associated with a location available on the augmented reality prototype. Out of the whole collection, however, we’ve also selected 500 images that can be viewed separately. These 500 images have been “pinned” in 3-D space, meaning that we’ve tried to line up points in the photo with points that still exist in the current landscape such as a roof line or street corner. The result, we’re hoping, is that the photos will appear on your phone in the correct orientation. If you’re slightly to the left of the location where the photo was taken, the photo will be angled slightly to the left. If you’re facing the location, the photo will be visible head-on. This should enable users to more easily see how the historic image compares to the current landscape.  While this technology underlying augmented reality is exciting, a lot of other behind-the-scenes work in the City Archives is also helping to bring the project to fruition.

Everyone has a favorite photograph or area of the city to explore on PhillyHistory.org but to select approximately 500 photographs out of the site’s roughly 93,000 images was a daunting challenge.  From the outset, we aimed to provide broad geographical coverage of the city in our selections, as well as represent the variety of collections available on PhillyHistory.org. In addition to the Department of Records, the database also includes images from the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Office of the City Representative, and the Philadelphia Water Department.  Primary considerations for selection included the date of the photograph, historical and aesthetic interest, and educational value, as well as how accurately a photograph matched up with the available Google Street View (current street level photos of Philadelphia), which we used to pin the photos as described above.  In addition, we were interested not only in photographs of locations that had changed dramatically but also photographs where some elements of the historic image and current street view were the same. We also had to avoid aerial photos since users would never be able to physically reach the point where the photo was taken. Ultimately, even with all these parameters in mind, our search of PhillyHistory’s collections yielded a fascinating wealth of photographs that offer compelling snapshots of the ties between Philadelphia’s past and present.


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Some of the most interesting areas of the city to explore through augmented reality are college and university campuses, which have often changed dramatically over time.  Several of the photographs selected from the University of Pennsylvania area notably highlight the development of Woodland Walk, the central artery through campus that, in 1936, was a far cry from the manicured walkway that it is today. Similarly, images of St. Joseph’s University around 54th Street and City Avenue chronicle City Avenue’s transition from a largely undeveloped road to a bustling commercial hub over a scant twenty years time.  In North Philadelphia, Temple University’s expansion down North Broad Street is evidenced in various photographs of the Chinese restaurants, Victrola stores, and automobile license centers that have been replaced by campus buildings.


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Another aspect of PhillyHistory’s collections that we chose to highlight in the augmented reality project is best described as “new looks at old places,” meaning photographs that show popular Philadelphia destinations and attractions in new or unexpected ways.  Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is Independence Hall and the surrounding area between Chestnut and Market Streets before many of the older buildings were cleared away for the construction of Independence Mall.  Photographs of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and prominent institutions like the Franklin Institute and the Philadelphia Museum of Art also offer a new look at a familiar landscape, one that historically featured more open space than busy highway.  Other notable landmarks that augmented reality enables us to see in a different light include the Betsy Ross House, Market East Station, Reading Terminal Market, and City Hall, particularly before Broad Street Station was demolished in the 1950s to make way for Penn Plaza.


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In the course of our selection process, the developers at Azavea, the software company assisting with the augmented reality application, created a map showing the geographic distribution of our selections to help ensure that nearly all of Philadelphia was adequately represented in the augmented reality prototype.  Many of the images were taken in Center City since PhillyHistory.org is especially rich in images of that area. While we strove to include a mix of neighborhoods beyond Center City, some areas were especially challenging in terms of selection.  Fairmount Park yielded few photographs where the location or Google Street View was precise enough for augmented reality.  In addition, Strawberry Mansion and the far Northeast proved challenging in terms of the subject of the photographs, many of which depict the minutia of street and bridge construction.  While these photos capture the development of the urban landscape, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact location of each section of road.  On the other end of the spectrum, neighborhoods such as Chestnut Hill, Overbrook, and South Philadelphia offered a plethora of historic images that captivated us and often uncannily echoed the contemporary Google Street View.  From the street signs of the Italian Market to train and trolley stops, many photographs from these neighborhoods featured the true convergence of past and present that is at the heart of augmented reality.  As the project moves forward, we are so excited to share the prototype application with you in the coming months. Hopefully, you will find our photograph selections as interesting and intriguing as we do and maybe even find something new (or old) in YOUR neighborhood.

Augmented Reality by PhillyHistory.org is funded by a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this application do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Augmented Reality Coming Soon to PhillyHistory.org

North Broad Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard in 1916 and 2010.

Have you ever wanted to time travel? Discover what Philadelphia looked like in the past and compare it to the present landscape? At PhillyHistory.org, we’re working on a way to do just that. In 2010, the Department of Records received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities to investigate the possibility of developing a prototype augmented reality application for PhillyHistory.org. Augmented reality refers to the ability to view digital data on a view of the current world. Utilizing a combination of the GPS and camera technologies available on contemporary smart phones, this mobile phone application will enable users to view historic photographs from PhillyHistory.org as overlays on the current urban landscape.

The above photo is a mock-up of how those overlays might work. We’re still in the development stage so the final results may differ dramatically, but we wanted to give you a sneak peek of what’s in the works. For more information on the project, read our announcement at http://www.phila.gov/Records/Archives/pdfs/Grants_NEH_Augmented_Reality_April_2010.pdf.

You don’t need to wait months though for mobile access to PhillyHistory.org. The images are always available on your smartphone at http://phillyhistory.org/i/.

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Planes, Parades, and Presidents! New Photos from the Office of the City Representative!


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The PhillyHistory.org team is excited to announce the addition of historic photographs from the collection of the City of Philadelphia Office of the City Representative! Featuring images of everything from planes (a Spirit of St. Louis reproduction arriving at Northeast airport) to parades (Mummers marching near City Hall) to presidents (President John F. Kennedy speaking in front of Independence Hall), these stunning images capture historic events in our city and country’s history.

For decades, the City of Philadelphia Office of the City Representative has developed and promoted events throughout the city. Over the course of their history, they have taken thousands of photographs documenting events ranging from parades and festivities to visits by political dignitaries and celebrities to activities at local recreation centers. Unseen for years, these images will be made available to the general public on PhillyHistory.org where they can be purchased, shared with friends, downloaded to Google Earth, and accessed via mobile technology.

While the full collection of images numbers in the tens of thousands, over 800 images are already available on PhillyHistory.org. Over the next few months, the PhillyHistory.org interns will be hard at work cataloging, numbering, and scanning hundreds of additional images. Check back often to see new photographs from the amazing collection of the Office of the City Representative!

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Historic Images from the Free Library of Philadelphia Now Available on PhillyHistory.org!


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PhillyHistory.org is excited to announce the addition of over 1,600 historic photographs from the collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Stunning images from the Historical Images of Philadelphia Collection and the Centennial Exhibition Collection are now available to search, view, and purchase on PhillyHistory.org.

Between nine and ten million people traveled to Philadelphia in 1876 to visit the Centennial Exhibition in Fairmount Park. From a crowd of tens of thousands gathered for the exhibition opening to the Statue of Liberty’s arm and torch, the amazing images in the Centennial Exhibition Collection depict the artwork, buildings, exhibits, and innovations that captivated visitors from around the world. These images can now be searched by location, providing remarkable insight into the plan of the Exhibition and the development of Fairmount Park. The Centennial images are complemented by photographs from the Historical Images of Philadelphia Collection. Depicting street scenes, homes, and events, these images show the bustling, diverse communities of Philadelphia in the late 1800s.

Together, these two collections provide an amazing visual history of the City of Philadelphia. For the first time ever, these images can now be purchased as prints or a variety of photo gifts. Visit www.phillyhistory.org and begin your trip to the past today! The addition of the Free Library of Philadelphia images to PhillyHistory.org is funded by the Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Partnership grant program.

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Visit PhillyHistory.org on your iPhone!

The PhillyHistory team is excited to announce that PhillyHistory.org is now accessible via iPhone at http://www.phillyhistory.org/i/! While PhillyHistory.org has been available on mobile phones for awhile, we had not yet developed a web application that allowed the website to be easily accessed and searched using an iPhone. To solve this problem, we created an iPhone specific web application that makes PhillyHistory.org easily accessible to iPhone users.

Since the display screen of an iPhone is obviously smaller than the screen on a computer, we chose to emphasize specific search criteria and photo display options to make the application as easy to use as possible. iPhone users have the option of searching for photographs by neighborhood or location or by navigating through a map of the city. The location of a photo is identified on the map by a red flag, and clicking on a flag displays the photograph and more information.

With full maps and geographic search capabilities, PhillyHistory.org on iPhone provides another great way to access historic photographs of the city. So if you’re walking around Philadelphia and want to know what an intersection looked like 60 years ago, pull out your iPhone or cell phone and check out PhillyHistory.org!

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PhillyHistory.org Photos Now Available on Flickr!

We are excited to announce that a select number of images from PhillyHistory.org are now available on Flickr!

Flickr, a popular online photo sharing website, allows users to upload images and share those images with the public. With millions of users from around the world, placing PhillyHistory.org photos on Flickr provides an opportunity to introduce many new people to the fantastic collection of images in the PhillyHistory.org database. Sixty-six photos, including some of the oldest and most popular images from the City Archives, were hand-picked for inclusion on Flickr. The images are organized into four thematic sets that provide a visual history of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, schools, construction and transportation projects, and public services and celebrations. Each photo is accompanied by information about the image, the address where it was taken (if available), and a link to the photograph on PhillyHistory.org.

One of the most exciting features on the new PhillyHistory.org Flickr photostream is the public commenting and tagging function. Since the PhillyHistory project began, we’ve received some wonderful stories and comments about the photographs from people around the world. Whenever possible, we try to share such feedback through our newsletter and other reports. The new Flickr photostream, however, gives you a chance to immediately comment on the photos, add notes directly to the images, tag the photos with keywords, and respond to comments left by other users. We’re hoping this feature will let the whole PhillyHistory.org community hear many more wonderful stories and remarks about the photos and what they mean to you.

The PhillyHistory.org photos on Flickr are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/phillyhistory. We encourage people to visit the photostream and add their comments, notes, and tags to the photos. Let us know what you think about the images!

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Introducing Google Street View on PhillyHistory.org!

Visitors to PhillyHistory.org may have noticed some interesting new features in the last couple weeks. We recently released the latest version of PhillyHistory.org which includes a few additions to the website. One of those additions is the inclusion of Google Street View. You may be familiar with Google Street View if you have experience using Google Maps. Google Street View provides street level photographs of cities and neighborhoods around the world. Using Street View on Google Maps, you can take virtual tours of various cities, including large portions of Philadelphia.

Street View provides a way to see the notable landmarks and general streets of a city without having to physically travel to that city. On PhillyHistory.org we thought that using Street View might be a great way to offer the ability to compare the historic photographs with a present day view of the same location. The historic photographs on PhillyHistory are beautiful, but after looking at them, it’s easy to start wondering if a certain building still exists or how the neighborhood has changed over 50 years. Short of actually going to the physical location where the photo was taken, however, it was difficult to view the modern location and contrast it to the historic photo.

Google Street View gives us a way to solve that problem. Thanks to the work of our software developers, we were able to add a link to Street View to many of the photographs in PhillyHistory.org. To see the Street View for a photograph, click on the small thumbnail of the photograph to load a larger detail view of the image. Below the historic photograph will be two small thumbnails – one of the historic image and one of a white box labeled “Google Street View.” Click on the Google Street View box to load a current view of the same location where the historic photo was taken. You may need to navigate up and down the road or pan the view in order to see the exact location that matches the historic photograph.

The results provide an exciting visual demonstration of how the city has changed and developed over the course of its history. A 1914 photo shows a few people standing outside the Head House Market near 2nd and Pine Streets. The present-day Street View for that location shows the same market house with a few changes. A photo from 1918 of the intersection of Arch Street and 10th Street includes several businesses and a sign stretched across the street proclaiming that “Food Will Win the War.” The same intersection in 2009 is still home to many businesses and restaurants. Instead of a war-time sign, an ornate Chinese gate extends across the street, reflecting the ancestry of many residents of an area which now makes up part of the Chinatown neighborhood.

While not every Philadelphia street is included in Google Street View, many streets are available. We hope you enjoy the opportunity to compare past architecture to the present landscape and learn more of the story of the city’s past. Check out the Street View on PhillyHistory.org, and let us know what you think at info@phillyhistory.org!