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What Was There? A photographic journey through history

World Map
World Map

The more things change, the more things change.

Some places are known for blowing the existing up and rebuilding from the ashes, history be damned.  Other places embrace their history, making it difficult for any new development to take place lest it disturb the historical (in)significance of what’s present.

That’s why Web Watch loves websites like WHAT WAS THERE, as it tries to capture the glory of history, without worrying about keeping the march of progress down.

All you need to do is scroll the map to your desired location and see if anyone has uploaded a photo for that location.  If you have an old photo, you can geotag the photo to where it belongs, as well.

You can get lost just scrolling through the map to see how things used to be.  Downtown San Francisco, for example, has hundreds of historical photos available, which really give you a great feel of how the city has changed over time.  WHAT WAS THERE says that their premise is just to get everyone to upload geotagged photos with a description and a year the photo was taken — all to build a “photographic history of the world”.

Web Watch is shocked that none of the Disney fans have loaded up the Disney-locations with their historical images – they say that the Disney parks are the Most Photographed Places in the World, so there must be some doozy photos from decades ago that could be posted on the map.