Geolocating Images on Urban Archive: Context Clues
Over the years, we’ve located over 100,000 images on Urban Archive. Often times, these digital assets come with metadata that keys us into where and when a photo was taken. But sometimes, we aren’t so lucky! I like to think of these as opportunities for exploration.
In instances where metadata is not particularly descriptive, we rely on a number of other factors to tell us where a photo was taken. For images of an exterior of a building or street, we can try to recognize addresses, street signs, storefronts, or any landmarks in the frame. For interior shots, we’re usually left in the dark unless we can spot substantial clues.
Here’s a happy case, where we were able to locate these images at the legendary Savoy Ballroom.
Sid Grossman took these images of an enthusiastic crowd dancing in a plush club to a live band as part of his Harlem Project. Funded by Works Progress Administration, they are now part of the Museum of the City of New York’s Federal Art Project Collection, which contains Grossman’s images alongside other WPA supported photographers. Shown below is how our backend catalog displays metadata for these images.
Now, by no means would I call myself a historian of Harlem’s legendary clubs, but I knew that the clamshell-like walls of this dancehall were unique enough to clue me into where this photo was taken. Rather than scouring the images of every dancehall and jazz club in Harlem in the 1930s, I looked closer for more context clues in the images.
Luckily, I found all the information I needed in the photos above. Over the bandstand is a sign for “Erskine Hawkins.” We can deduct that it was Hawkins, a trumpeter and big band leader, who played at the club that night. If we dig a little into Hawkins' career, we know he played at the Harlem Opera House, Apollo Theater, and was a recurring performer at the Savoy Ballroom.
The stage at the Harlem Opera House and the Apollo didn’t flank the sides of the wall like the images above. So, I looked for images of the Savoy Ballroom.
It was at Welcome to the Savoy where I found those images. An immersive digital project, Welcome to the Savoy seeks to create an experience “at the crossroads of immersive theatre and virtual reality” to preserve the legacy of the Savoy Ballroom. By gathering hundreds of photographs and floorplans of the ballroom, Welcome to the Savoy will digitally reconstruct the dancehall.
The photo above, sourced from their website has striped walls that match the images in the Museum of the City of New York’s collection. Mystery solved!
After locating thousands of images, our team at Urban Archive has developed a unique skill set that relies on various publicly available online resources. Our process varies greatly, and sometimes noticing one small detail can lead to more questions than answers. In those cases, we turn to our community and partners for help, as we did with this photo of the Bayside Shipyard. Lucky for us, Bayside Historical Society knew exactly where these boats were docked! In the future, we look forward to opening up this process to allow our community to take part directly.
If you have any questions about the way we locate images or the tools we use in our research process, please drop us a line!
