Cities have long pro­vid­ed a rich envi­ron­ment for pho­tog­ra­phy, at least to pho­tog­ra­phers not inter­est­ed exclu­sive­ly in nature. But only with the advent of the motion pic­ture cam­era did the sub­ject of cities find a pho­to­graph­ic form that tru­ly suit­ed it. Hence the pop­u­lar­i­ty in the 1920s of “city sym­pho­ny” films, each of which sought to cap­ture and present the real life of a dif­fer­ent bustling indus­tri­al metrop­o­lis. But while city sym­phonies cer­tain­ly hold up as works of art, they do make mod­ern-day view­ers won­der: what would all these cap­i­tals look like if I could gaze back­ward in time, look­ing not through the jit­tery, col­or­less medi­um of ear­ly motion-pic­ture film, but with my own eyes?

Youtu­ber Igna­cio López-Fran­cos offers a step clos­er to the answer in the form of these four videos, each of which takes his­tor­i­cal footage of a city, then cor­rects its speed and adds col­or to make it more life­like.

At the top of the post we have “a col­lec­tion of high qual­i­ty remas­tered prints from the dawn of film tak­en in Belle Époque-era Paris, France from 1896–1900.” Shot by the Lumière com­pa­ny (which was found­ed by Auguste and Louis Lumière, inven­tors of the pro­ject­ed motion pic­ture), the sights cap­tured by the film include the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Tui­leries Gar­den, the then-new Eif­fel Tow­er, and the now-soon-to-be-reha­bil­i­tat­ed but then-intact Notre Dame cathe­dral.

The Paris footage was col­orized using DeOld­ify, “a deep learn­ing-based project for col­oriz­ing and restor­ing old images.” So was the footage just above, which shows New York City in 1911 as shot by the Swedish com­pa­ny Sven­s­ka Biografteatern and released pub­licly by the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. “Pro­duced only three years before the out­break of World War I, the every­day life of the city record­ed here — street traf­fic, peo­ple going about their busi­ness — has a casu­al, almost pas­toral qual­i­ty that dif­fers from the mod­ernist per­spec­tive of lat­er city-sym­pho­ny films,” say the accom­pa­ny­ing notes. “Take note of the sur­pris­ing and remark­ably time­less expres­sion of bore­dom exhib­it­ed by a young girl filmed as she was chauf­feured along Broad­way in the front seat of a con­vert­ible lim­ou­sine.”

Shot twen­ty years lat­er, these clips of New York’s The­ater Dis­trict have also under­gone the DeOld­ify treat­ment, which gets the bright lights (and numer­ous bal­ly­hoo­ing signs) of the big city a lit­tle clos­er to the stun­ning qual­i­ty they must have had on a new arrival in the 1930s. The streets of Havana were seem­ing­ly qui­eter dur­ing that same decade, at least if the col­orized footage below is to be believed. But then, the his­to­ry of tourism in Cuba remem­bers the 1930s as some­thing of a dull stretch after the high-liv­ing 1920s that came before, dur­ing the Unit­ed States’ days of Pro­hi­bi­tion — let alone the even more daiquiri- and moji­to-soaked 1950s that would come lat­er, speak­ing of eras one dreams of see­ing for one­self.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

It’s hard­ly orig­i­nal advice but bears repeat­ing any­way: no one vis­it­ing New York should leave, if they can help it, before they cross the Brook­lyn Bridge—preferably on foot, if pos­si­ble, and at a rev­er­en­tial pace that lets them soak up all the Neo-goth­ic structure’s sto­ried his­to­ry. Walk from Man­hat­tan to Brook­lyn, then back again, or the oth­er away around, since that’s what the bridge was built for—the com­mutes of a nine­teenth cen­tu­ry bridge-but-not-yet-tun­nel crowd (the first NYC sub­way tun­nel didn’t open until 1908).

In 1899, film­mak­ers from Amer­i­can Muto­scope and Bio­graph elect­ed for a mode of trav­el for a New York cen­tu­ry, putting a cam­era at “the front end of a third rail car run­ning at high speed,” notes a 1902 Amer­i­can Muto­scope cat­a­logue. They accel­er­at­ed the tour to the pace of a mod­ern machine, chos­ing the Man­hat­tan to Brook­lyn route. “The entire trip con­sumes three min­utes of time, dur­ing which abun­dant oppor­tu­ni­ty is giv­en to observe all the struc­tur­al won­ders of the bridge, and far dis­tant riv­er panora­ma below.” (See one-third of the trip just below.)

Film­mak­er Bill Mor­ri­son looped excerpts of those three New York min­utes and extend­ed them to nine in his short, stereo­scop­ic jour­ney “Out­er­bor­ough,” at the top, com­mis­sioned by The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in 2005 and scored with orig­i­nal music by Todd Reynolds. Tak­ing the 1899 footage as its source mate­r­i­al, the film turns a rapid tran­sit tour into a mov­ing man­dala, a frac­tal rep­e­ti­tion at fright­en­ing­ly faster and faster speeds, of the bridge’s most mechan­i­cal vistas—the views of its loom­ing, vault­ed arch­es and of the steel cage sur­round­ing the tracks.

One of the engi­neer­ing won­ders of the world, the Brook­lyn Bridge opened 136 years ago this month, on May 24th, 1883. The first per­son to walk across it was the woman who over­saw its con­struc­tion for 11 of the 14 years it took to build the bridge. After design­er John Roe­bling died of tetanus, his son Wash­ing­ton took over, only to suc­cumb to the bends dur­ing the sink­ing of the cais­sons and spend the rest of his life bedrid­den. Emi­ly, his wife, “took on the chal­lenge,” notes the blog 6sqft, con­sult­ing with her hus­band while active­ly super­vis­ing the project.

She “stud­ied math­e­mat­ics, the cal­cu­la­tions of cate­nary curves, strengths of mate­ri­als and the intri­ca­cies of cable con­struc­tion.” On its open­ing day, Emi­ly walked the bridge’s 1,595 feet, from Man­hat­tan to Brook­lyn, “her long skirt bil­low­ing in the wind as she showed [the crowd] details of the con­struc­tion,” writes David McCul­lough in The Great Bridge. Six days lat­er, an acci­dent caused a pan­ic and a stam­pede that killed twelve peo­ple. Some months lat­er, P.T. Barnum’s Jum­bo led a parade of 21 ele­phants over the bridge in a stunt to prove its safe­ty.

Barnum’s the­atrics were sur­pris­ing­ly honest—the bridge may have need­ed sell­ing to skep­ti­cal com­muters, but it need­ed no hype. It out­lived most of its con­tem­po­raries, despite the fact that it was built before engi­neers under­stood the aero­dy­nam­ic prop­er­ties of bridges. The Roe­blings designed and built the bridge to be six times stronger than it need­ed to be, but no one could have fore­seen just how durable the struc­ture would prove.

It elicit­ed a fas­ci­na­tion that nev­er waned for its pal­pa­ble strength and beau­ty, yet few­er of its admir­ers chose to doc­u­ment the jour­ney that has tak­en mil­lions of Brook­lynites over the riv­er to low­er Man­hat­tan, by foot, bike, car, and yes, by train. Leave it to that futur­ist for the com­mon man, Thomas Edi­son, to film the trip. See his 1899 footage of Brook­lyn to Man­hat­tan by train just above.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

An Online Gallery of Over 900,000 Breath­tak­ing Pho­tos of His­toric New York City

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.) 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness