Posted by
Damon Schreiber (Toronto, Canada) on 29 July 2007 in Cityscape & Urban and Portfolio.

Sakamoto/Schreiber - Toronto 1977-2007 series starts here.

There's a long story, and this will be a long series, so I'll tell it slowly over the coming days.

Back in early 2004 I was doing a Google search for images of Toronto City Hall. There were hundreds, but one in particular stood out. There was something different about it. City Hall itself, one of Toronto's architectural landmarks along with Casa Loma and the CN Tower, hasn't changed much in appearance since it was built in 1965.

But there was something about this picture. Even though it was a familiar site, it looked somehow ... old. So with my curiosity piqued, I followed that image back to its page of origin and found myself in an Internet time capsule: a large series of images of Toronto taken in what looked like the 1970s.

(continued tomorrow)

Top image copyright Shige Sakamoto - 坂本政恵

High-res here (my image) and here (1977 image). The entire 1977 series can be viewed in context starting here.

[City Hall (Queen near Bay), Toronto]