Historical photos

Construction Workers Lunchtime 1931 St Johns Bridge N. Portland Oregon historic bw photo by Ray Atkeson

A collection of pictures saved from disappearing to time.

In the mid-2000s, historian Anna Pegler-Gordon said that visual media often seems more accessible to her students than the written record. They claimed images make the past seem more accessible, giving concrete shape to a world that sometimes seems intangible. Not to mention the immediacy of the image, which often conveys information more quickly than a primary document written in an unfamiliar, or even a foreign, language. But according to Pegler-Gordon, this immediacy also works well in…

Not many people know that the famous American author Jack London was also a skilled documentary photographer and photojournalist. He took thousands of pictures over the years from the slums…

It’s become one of the most recognized photos of the Second World War, and immortalizes the men that marched away to protect our freedom and the families that cried as they left. Wait For Me, Daddy is a photo that was taken by Claude P. Dettloff, of The Province newspaper, on Oct. 1, 1940. In the photo, the British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles) were marching down Eighth Street, at the Columbia Street intersection, in New Westminster, BC. While Dettloff was […]

Photographer Thomas Annan captured Glasgow between the 1860s and 70s, at a time when the city had transformed and rapidly grown

Amazing photos from the past

The city's Department of Records has digitized more than 870,000 photos that date back to the mid-1800s taken by city engineers, photographers and police detectives.

These colorized versions of black and white photographs allow you to look at a piece of history with a different eye.