The Missing Block Of Emmet Street in anticlimatic

One of my favorite new hobbies, as a lore and especially local lore nerd, is taking old photos from the online public domain archive sites, and using further research and other basic detective skills to track down exactly where the photos were taken. Once I find it, I like to take the photo again from the same place at the same angle. After layering them together and lining them up perfectly in some open source photo software, I cross dissolve them with some open source video software, to the above effect.

Between the time the first and second photos were taken, the city bought an entire block (shown) and demolished it. It bought several, in fact. In doing so, it created a large bypass around the town in the 1950s and named it “Sunset Boulevard.”

I don’t always get it right. I’ve had to redo several that turned out to be completely different areas that just so happened to line up. It’s a bit like looking for a puzzle piece of a particular shape, when they’re all the same color, and ALMOST finding the right piece…but just not quite. I look at buildings, which can change shape, to see if the bones might still align. I’ll go to various places and inspect buildings for signs of remodel or repair that might line up something in the older photos. I’ll search through the county building public deeds for named storefronts I can’t place to help ballpark the location and the dates of operation.

When it all comes together, the first time the dissolve runs, there’s always something revealed about the passage of time in the same area that surprises me. It’s the closest I’ve come so far to building a time machine.