Recently I realized that I’ve been in Seattle long enough to give directions by where something used to be — it’s across the street from where Cha Cha’s was. When people ask where I live I often say “on the grave of Thumpers“, and they know what I mean. Usually.

Many years ago I became obsessed with the ruins of the grand Sutro Baths in San Francisco and set up a site about it. I’ve been photographing it for years.

One thing that did not occur to me in the beginning was that the ruins were still evolving… well, devolving, continuing to crumble.

For example, the stairs to nowhere that I use as the iconography for the site no longer exist, disappearing slat by slat… I think they were totally gone by 2003. You’re lucky to even find a sliver of the wood now.

It’s been my continuing project to document, quite literally, every inch of it. I’ve started to work on a Flash tool where you can zoom in and out of the panorama and go back and forth in time to see, well, what used to be there. That pipe? Connected to the upper bath, near the waterslide. That half-a-staircase leading you down into the Pacific Ocean? Entrance to the gallery. A couple days ago I downloaded Google Earth and was able to view the fully-built Baths back in 1946 — wow — Google Mapping into the past.

“Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.”

— Ada Louise Huxtable

Last week’s Mad Men was about this — check out ‘Mad Men’ Tackles The Sad Saga Of Old Penn Station. God do I love that show. Artist Miru Kim went underground and photographed New York’s abandoned subway stations: Making art of New York’s urban ruins.

Today I found this incredible article about a team that essentially created block-by-block time travel to New York City — it took my breath away: Before New York: When Henry Hudson first looked on Manhattan in 1609, what did he see? The concept, technology used, and just general overall creativity and execution are amazing. A deeply ecological and architectural treat. You may play with it here.

The Mannahatta Project

Is there any of that wildness left? Just a bit. Another (much-smaller) project finds it at Nowhere in Manhattan.

It’s been a fine day on the webs for me because I also randomly happened upon this — for the last two years, Flickr user HK Man has been collecting old photos of Hong Kong, finding the exact spots at which they were taken, and taking them again.

And so it goes…