Seattle Then and Now

by James Maddison Collins

Celebrating America's favorite cityscapes, this series combines historic interest and contemporary beauty. Then And Now features fascinating archival photographs contrasted with specially commissioned, full-color images of the same scene today. A visual lesson in the historic changes of our greatest urban landscapes.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, Photography, Historical

144 pages, Hardcover

First published May 7, 2002

Reviews

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book! I love learning about the history of Seattle. My only gripe is that a few days earlier I had seen the 2010 version, which was more interesting since it is way more up to date vs the 2000 version.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

pictures of Seattle in the olden days (often the 1800s or early 1900s) side-by-side with pictures of the same sites now.

[Howard Frisk · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are no less than 8 books on Goodreads with a "Seattle Then and Now" title. This particular book by James Madison Collins I found at a thrift store, so I picked it up. It consists historical and present-day photographs as you would expect, but very few of the present-day photographs were taken from the same viewpoint as the historical ones. This makes the then and now comparisons much less obvious. I think the photographer should have spent a little more time in capturing the present-day photographs from viewpoints more like those in the historical photographs.

Another rather odd feature of the book is there are no chapters and no table of contents. The photographs are not organized in any way that I could tell.

Rather than reading this book, I would suggest one of the books by Paul Dorpat.

[Skallagrimsen]

A decent photographic depiction of Seattle's evolution from a Gold Rush era boomtown to a major American hub of technology, commerce, and culture. Worth at least flipping through for anyone who knows and loves, or is just curious about, the beautiful city of Seattle.