To view the images full screen, click the bottom-right icon in the viewing pane
These photographs were taken using Kodachrome film by the improbably and wonderfully named Chalmers Butterfield, probably in 1949.
London, 1940s, in hi-res colour
If you like this, check out:
Colour photographs of London, 1:55pm on a sunny Sunday afternoon, 1924
Ziegfeld Follies, 1920s
"Hitler's Stealth Bomber"
Colour photographs of Charlie Chaplin, 1917-1918
'If London Were Like New York', 1902
The Disappearing Face of New York
Lesbian Pulp Fiction, 1935-1958
Retronautic WTF III
House of David Baseball Team
Construction of the USS Macon Airship
Steampunk Leather Masks
Raquel Welch on a cross
Tokyo Subway Manner Posters, 1976-1982
'La Famille et l'Alcool' c.1900
The kitchen that time forgot
Fashion, 1940s - 1960s, by Lillian Bassman
NASA Photography Manual, 1984
Donut Queens
Retronautic WTF V
North American Settlers
'Miracles You’ll See In The Next Fifty Years', 1950
Incredible! More of the same please!
Amazing!!
It’s not until you take a good close look at the people in these pictures that you see how different things were back then.
I could identify Piccadilly Circus right away, I’ve walked down Regents Street a million times before, and architecturally not very much has changed… but the people look so different.
I could stare at these photos for hours. Great site, I’ll be checking back often.
What would be awesome is if someone finds the same vantage points, and take photos today and put them side by side. London 1949 vs London 2010. Gorgeous colors and the res is awesome.Where these prints, slides or scanned negatives? Was any restoration needed?
These were Kodachrome slides which Chalmers’ son scanned in. I did some minor tweaks by straightening them and balancing out their levels.
Cool idea about the vantage points. When we launch The Retroscope around July, it will be possible to stand at the same vantage points and, using a smartphone, see these pictures hovering over the scene as it is now, in Augmented Reality
I never imagined there would be enough cars for traffic jams back then.
The men are all wearing hats!
`oooowh . . . . .takes me back . . . . . Yes everyone did wear hats then, great idea!
The last (lowest) one shows, I think, how much better everything looked before there were yellow lines and bollards everywhere. I can just about remember how it was then, but I was only 2 when these pictures were taken and the parking restrictions and such-like didn’t kick in till the early 60s.
One of the things you I notice in films which fake the past using current locations is how they have to paint out and conceal all the street markings and furniture.
great pictures. what’s the deal with using/reprinting them?
Hi Gabriel
The pictures are owned by Chalmers Butterfield’s son and he has specified:
“Use this image as needed, but for uses other than personal, please credit as “Photo by Chalmers Butterfield”.”
It would also be very cool if you could mention “How to be a Retronaut”
Thanks
Chris
I love those old fashioned neon signs. When lit up they were much more exciting and glamorous than the current “digital” offerings at Piccadilly Circus. Another case of “improvement means less”
The last one is Grosvenor Chapel in Mayfair. Today’s photo from roughly the same location can be found on:
http://maps.google.no/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=no&geocode=&q=church&sll=51.510405,-0.150912&sspn=0.004534,0.00869&ie=UTF8&rq=1&ev=zi&radius=0.19&hq=church&hnear=&ll=51.508669,-0.15324&spn=0,359.99131&z=17&layer=c&cbll=51.508703,-0.15309&panoid=coXHiFtXfwx4evlR8u21eQ&cbp=12,79.76,,0,4.56
Fantastic! Thank you, Isak
The third one (just off Sloane Square) is at:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&sll=51.493321,-0.158148&sspn=0.002228,0.0053&ie=UTF8&radius=0.11&rq=1&ev=p&hq=church&hnear=&ll=51.493118,-0.157848&spn=0,359.9947&z=18&layer=c&cbll=51.49323,-0.157876&panoid=SlBWZtd-WUhk67e4zcTcag&cbp=12,162.44,,0,2.63
Found it by looking up bus route 22! The only building that is in the two photos is next to the scaffolded building in the Google Street View.
This is just the sort of thing the web oes so well. Utterly fascinating. please post many many more
Stunning Stuff.
Sloane Square in stunning hi-res colour in 1949 and now in 2010!
http://www.aref-adib.com/archives/000674.html
This is great, AA, thanks very much for taking the picture. How extraordinary that the bus is in the same place, and that you happened to capture a man in a hat!
I am so impressed with the quality of the photos! But at the same time, just looking at them makes me nostalgic and yet angry at “modern” architecture. These unique buildings demonstrate the ambiance possible when men create something other than mere boxes and are willing to spend additional funds to create settings that make one want to be there.
Fanstastic! The 1940s is one of my favourite periods in history.
Seriously these photos are glorious! I absolutely love them…Its like a time machine…I so wish I could be there back then…So much better than now
I now life in Canada and was looking for some pictures for my desktop wallpaper, one of these has just become that, with this site added to be favorites.
Thanks
Here’s number 1 and 2. Interesting how the advertising is now on the other building.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Picadilly+Place,+London,+United+Kingdom&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=52.77044,96.855469&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Picadilly+Pl,+Westminster,+London+W1J+9,+United+Kingdom&ll=51.509771,-0.134861&spn=0.01023,0.023646&z=16&layer=c&cbll=51.510098,-0.134551&panoid=pETppaBmo25WaiH_WpJHlQ&cbp=12,36.65,,0,-17.83
Can Kodachrome do red? Absolutely. Stunning pix.
Look at those pics. Really good. thanks
Interesting to see a queue of people at the bus stop. Seems that nowadays we just get a big grouping of people on the pavement near the bus stop with no manners, no consideration of who was there first, etc.
I think those busses are still in service
Neat to see different colors of cars. Everyone assumes that all cars were black back then, due to B&W photos. But here we see burgundy, green, blue, black & gold cars!
Det är bara att hoppas att det blir bra väder på semestern. För oavsett om man åker till Paris eller London så vill man ju ha fint väder.
London 1940s in hi res absolutley stunning pics get the feeling you are actually there would be proud to have them in my own collection. Love the website keep up the good work
did you forget to include the high res of the first image, or was it not available?
Hi Archer. That was a limitation of our current light box, I am afraid. We are working on a new supercharged version of the site right now. In the meantime, here’s a link to the hi res version of the image.
I think it’s “probably in” 1950, not 1949 that these were taken. “Treasure Hunt”, directed by John Gielgud, opened on 14 September 1949 at the Apollo but it ran into 1950. Equally, Kay Hammond and John Clements are presumably in “The Beaux’ Stratagem”, which also ran over the year-end at the Lyric. The clincher is the show at the Globe, which is clearly “Ring Round the Moon”, a 1950 production that opened at the end of January.
Stunning photographs…
There’s something so awesome about these pics like it makes the past go from a fuzzy sort of vision of an old dream to something that’s so vivid it reminds you “Oh yeah, these are real people that existed once and they were as real as you and I and someday we’ll be the one’s in those pictures 50 years down the road” I find the concept of time so interesting
Well, Laura, you have just summed up what being a Retronaut is all about.
That’s the wrong way round: number 3 is the Grosvenor Chapel; number 4 is Holy Trinity Sloane Street.
Beautiful, beautiful pictures. Thank you.
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Despite myself, I keep this site open in my browser. With a WWW filled with websites you would never go back to…this one just keeps calling you back.
Can you please do a lot more of these, since we live in the present, we need to be reminded of how we had lived yesterday. I was born in a part of the world that has erased most of it’s limited history and many of my childhood places are gone for good.
Excellent use of technology to remind us of our humanity!
These are awesome! love to see more