February 25, 2010
This is awesome.
SepiaTown is a brand new website integrating mapping technology with crowd-sourced historical photos to create a virtually strollable San Francisco.
They’ve collected over 150 images of San Francisco thus far, mostly clustered around California, Montgomery, and Market Streets … but it’s easy to see how the entire city could be reconstructed.

Reconstructed with your help. Whether you have a boxful of old photos in the closet, or run a professional photo archive, you are respectfully encouraged to load ’em up!
Here’s the skinny on SepiaTown from its own sepia-toned lips:
“SepiaTown lets you search, view and upload historical images by location, in order to see what once stood where you now stand.
As the SepiaTown collection comes to encompass thousands of locations throughout the globe it will allow people to interact with history and geography in a new and exciting way; to tour the landscapes, cityscapes and events of history with a scope and breadth never before possible.
Whether you’re a large institution like a museum or library, or an individual with a cool collection of old snapshots, uploading is simple. We display low res versions of your images which, if you choose, are accompanied by a link to your site.
There is no charge to upload and display images via SepiaTown and we make no claim of copyright on any uploaded material. All images legally owned by you remains yours.”
It’s not the only website of its kind, but it might be the nicest — not only is the interface beautifully clean and easy to navigate, but uploading images is a snap.
They hope to survive via advertising and donations. My donation is this very post — and I wish them luck.
March 2, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Very cool, thanks for the information on Sepiatown. I like your posts they have been helpful in my book research. You should check out the Verdian Library Collection of the California newspapers. It’s too cool.
March 4, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Wow! Thanks for the find. I’m there straightaway. How lucky SF is to be so well documented.
April 20, 2010 at 12:30 pm
That is awesome! Now if they would be able to come up with a way to do street view, and have a re-constructed or time-line based view of these buildings from the street, THAT would be amazing. Regardless, this is a great resource for archival location photos.
August 5, 2010 at 9:30 pm
You might also be interested in a site I launched awhile back called LookBackMaps, another user-driven historical photo mapping site–we also have an iPhone app that allows you to take these collections out and about and bring history to life. It’s exciting to see how much interest sites like these have generated, and many of us are working together to use technology to bring more of the past within reach.
Thanks for your great blog!
Jon