Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 10/13/2016
LONGMEADOW – The Longmeadow Historical Society has a created an interactive historical map and photo project called “Through the Lens – Longmeadow 100 Years Ago,” which allows users to explore the town as it was a century ago.
Jim Moran, a member of the historical society, told Reminder Publications most of the photographs from the project were taken from 1902 to 1927 by resident Paesiello Emerson.
“He was a boot maker and then he moved to town in his 60s,” he explained. “He kind of retired and moved into town and he took up photography … He did it for the next 30 years until he died when he was 93. He took pictures all over New England – a lot of them in Longmeadow. We have a collection that his sister donated to the historical society.”
He added the historical society has 1,500 glass negatives of photographs taken during that period.
The Longmeadow Historical Society utilized a program that digitally restores historic photographs and uploads them online at a high resolution created in partnership with Digital Commonwealth and the Boston Public Library, Moran said.
“The Boston Public Library actually came in and picked up all 1,500 pieces of glass, which weighed 400 pounds, took them to Boston, got them all scanned, and brought them back to us,” he added. “All the photographs are online. It represents a collection that’s available to the public.”
As an example, Moran spoke about a 1907 photograph taken by Emerson, which has been used as the front cover of a past town report, and shows trolley tracks on Longmeadow Street while an early automobile makes its way down the dirt road adjacent to the tracks.
“And in the background here, if you really look at it, is another covered wagon,” he added. “As far as modes of transportation, you have everything here. This is probably, I’d say, the best photograph in the collection.”
One of the houses featured in the photograph, located off of York Drive, still exists in the town to this day, Moran said.
He added the photographs have very high resolutions, which allows for users to zoom in and see people’s faces or even read license plates on automobiles from that time.
“In this particular photograph, we actually zoomed in and your can read the license plate number,” Moran said. “We’re actually able to go into Connecticut archives and find out who owned that car. And the car was actually owned by the Electric Motor Vehicle Company of Hartford, CT, and they got into combustion engines, so this is probably a prototype.”
Moran said the historical society is looking for volunteers to participate in the crowd-sourcing project that utilizes MapsAlive – a piece of server-based software. The map used for the project is from 1920.
“It’s a town map and the really neat thing about it is it has all the addresses and all the structures, obviously if they’re gone now,” he noted. “So, we can take all the photographs we have and actually put them on the map.”
The online map project also features descriptions of where each photograph was taken and in some instances video footage such as a walking tour of the Longmeadow Cemetery featured on YouTube, Moran said.
The historical society is also seeking additional historic photographs of Longmeadow from that time period to add to its collection from residents to help expand the project, he noted.
To view the project visit www.longmeadowhistoricalsociety.org/maps/1920.html.
Any individual interested in participating in the project or donating photographs can email the historical society at LongmeadowHS@gmail.com or call 567-3600.