6th and Carnarvon: 1922 and 2008

Last month, I matched up an old photo of Columbia Street with a newly-shot digital image. It was surprisingly easy. I thought that as a little hobby, I'd occasionally try other images around my adopted city of New Westminster, BC. Although by no means ancient, this town has been here since the advent of common photography.

I tried walking to a very near intersection to have another go at this. I found it a bit hard to make the two images match. Of course, eighty-six years ago there was a different building at the NE corner of 6th and Carnarvon. In addition, in the original photo there was a telephone poll directly at the corner but in today's image it's off center. The fact the B&W photo has a three storey building means that I had to leave a fair amount of sky in the newer picture too.

Even with these two characteristics taken into consideration, there's something unique about the old photo. The corner of the Reliable Furniture Company is nearly in the exact center of the image. Yet along 6th Street, the windows are in sets of three. This combined with the higher roof angle makes it appear much shorter than the Carnarvon street side. As the pole is pretty much in the center, this seems to be an optical illusion of sorts. That's something I cannot reproduce with the present structure. Today the building houses a part of the Simon Fraser Health Authority.