London Bridge

Well, I was wrong about the weather yesterday. It was rainy in the morning, but just before lunchtime the sun came out and the afternoon was beautiful. As you can see from the photo above, showing Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast on the Thames, I decided to go on a little excursion.

Blogger Jeanie, who you'll recall I met up with Wednesday night, brought me some old postcards, because she knows I'm a fan of old ephemera like that. She forgot to give them to me on Wednesday but she left them in an envelope at the front desk of her hotel, where I picked them up a day or two later. They were mostly American but thrown into the mix was this:

That is a view of London Bridge meant to be seen through a stereoscopic viewer, which would in theory give it a three-dimensional perspective. It was sold by Montgomery Ward, so it had probably not actually come from London, but was instead a way for Americans to "see the world" without traveling in an era when travel was difficult, time-consuming and expensive.

I tried to figure out how old the picture is. The same card is available on Wikimedia, dated circa 1895-1900. Another very similar image, also said to be from a stereopticon card and probably taken by the same photographer -- is dated "early 1890s." (They look like the same picture but the arrangement of the pedestrians is different, so they must have been different exposures.)

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to go down to London Bridge and compare the view to see what it looks like now.

And here's the answer. I couldn't get the same altitude as the photographer of the stereoscopic image -- maybe he was shooting out a window or from a rooftop? But you get the idea.

In the old photo, across the river you can see the Monument, and immediately to its right the steeple of the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, and then farther to the right another church spire. None of that is visible now, having been hemmed in by more modern buildings. (Maybe the top of the Monument or the St. Magnus church spire would still be visible if that building on the riverfront wasn't covered in white scaffolding, or if I could attain the card photographer's elevated perspective -- I'm not sure.)

And of course the bridge itself is also different, the old one having been famously "falling down," sold to an American oil tycoon, and moved to Lake Havasu, Arizona. Here's the full story on that, according to a BBC article from just a few days ago.

I walked across the bridge thinking I might go up in the Monument, which I've never done. But alas, it was closed. It commemorates the Great Fire of London in 1666. Instead I settled for having coffee and a cookie while sitting beneath it on the plaza.

I tried to figure out what church is visible on the right in the old photo, and I eventually settled on this one -- The Guild Church of St. Margaret Pattens. Like the Monument, it has been overshadowed by more modern buildings including the "walkie-talkie," at left.

Anyway, it was a fun day out and a good way to experience a sunny afternoon!