Learning About Architecture with the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive made the announcement on August 29 that millions of images had been posted to Internet Archive Book Images on Flickr. The planned 14 million images come from approximately 2 million books, with thousands added every day. Each page is scanned with OCR (Opitcal Character Recognition) to include about 500 words before and after each image, creating some gibberish in the process but aiding in keyword searches. Further, books are tagged by title, year, author, subject (such as "architecture") and publisher, to make wading through the millions of images a little easier.

To try it out, we searched for images on "Chicago architecture" and came across the above photo of the present-day Chicago Cultural Center, built in 1897 as the city's central library; the building will host next year's inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. The photo comes from an early 20th-century book One hundred and twenty-five photographic views of Chicago. Clicking on the title tag brought up many more historical views of the city from the book; some of them are highlighted below.

Chicago Federal Building, built as the city's main post office in 1905: The building was demolished in 1965 and replaced with the Kluczynski Federal Building designed by Mies van der Rohe.

K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Temple, designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler and completed in 1891: The building was turned into the Pilgrim Baptist Church in 1926. In 2006 it suffered a fire during restoration work that gutted the building; only the stone walls remain, braced by steel supports for possible reconstruction.

John J. Glessner House, designed by H.H. Richardson and completed in 1887: The house was designated a historic landmark in 1970 and today it hosts tours and other events as the Glessner House Museum.

Marshall Field's Wholesale Store, designed by H.H. Richardson and completed in 1887: This Richardson edifice was not as lucky as the Glessner House; it was closed in 1930, when Fields's larger Merchandise Mart was completed, and then was demolished shortly thereafter.

Monadnock Building, actually two buildings designed by Burnham & Root (1891) and Holabird & Roche (1893): The separation between the older building on the right and the later building on the left can be noticed in the highly decorated cornice found on the latter.

The Palmer House, designed by John M. Van Osdel and completed in 1875. This version is the second of three Palmer House hotels on the same site; the first was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 and the second was demolished in the mid-1920s to make way for a 25-story hotel that still stands.

Chicago Drainage Canal under construction, completed in 1900: Referred to as "one of the most stupendous undertakings ever carried out by the city of Chicago," the project is today known as the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and more commonly as reversing the flow of the Chicago River, in order to alleviate sewage dumped into the lake and connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River.