There’s always something interesting at Shorpy.com the vintage photo blog featuring thousands of images from the 1850s to 1950s.
Atlantic City 1908
Coney Island 1905
Hotel Flanders, Philadelphia 1905
Ellis Island 1911
Key West 1900
New Orleans 1880s
San Francisco City Hall 1906
Bronx NYC
Woolworth Building 1913
Zephyr 1939
Flat Iron Building NYC 1905
Boston Public
Boston Public Bates Room
Harold Washington Library, Chicago
Harold Washington Lobby
Thomas Crane Library, Quincy MA
Thomas Crane Library
Thomas Crane Library
Thomas Crane Library
Crane Library
Woburn Library, Woburn MALos Angeles Riordan Library
Chris Wild’s amazing website, How to be a Retronaut, is a virtual time machine with astonishing retro-posts that will transport you in time
Liberation Day Parade
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A recent series by Dutch historian Jo Teeuwisse chronicals World War II and contemporay Amsterdam with a very clever photo mash-up.
Damrak
Damrak Liberation Day
British artist Jason de Caires Taylor creates extraordinary life-sized cement sculptures of people in a variety of poses and then submerges them in the sea off of the Mexican Yucatan and in the Caribbean Sea off of Grenada.
Eventually, the installations will become part of the marine ecology as the basis for new coral reefs.
The Guardian newspaper has reported a holiday story with a “twist” in “true Dickensian style”. While the staff of the Dickens House Museum in Clerkenwell, London, were preparing their Christmas decorations, news arrived of a minor Christmas miracle.
No, Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t show up, but the Heritage Lottery Fund announced a plan to fund a 
major £2 million restoration of the museum’s home. The modernization and refurbishment is scheduled to be completed in time for the 2012 celebrations of the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth.
The Dickens House has the most significant collection of Dickens memorabilia in Britain. Although Dickens only lived in the house on Doughty Street for three years, he wrote most of Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby there.
The Dickens House still needs to raise £900,000 in matching funds for the restoration project. You can donate at their website.
Montreal artist Jon Rafman obsessively reviews tens of thousands of Google Maps Streetview images and compiles an intriguing ongoing world tour.
A selection of his culled photos is currently on view at NYC’s New Museum in a show sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation.
The old City Hall Station, built in 1904 and decommissioned in 1945, is unlike any other New York City subway station. Filled with beautifully tiled vaults and arches, skylights, brass fittings and stained glass, it was once the terminus of the IRT line that ran north all the way to 145th street along Broadway.
The City Hall Station was designed to reflect the “City Beautiful” architectural movement of the late 19th century that fostered the notion that artful architecture could improve civic culture.
The station is nearly 400 feet long, curved with nary a straight line in sight. Fifteen colorfully tiled arches support the decorative ceiling and blue glass skylights.
Designated a city landmark in 1979, the station is still accessible today if you ride the No. 6 train to the end of the line at the Brooklyn Bridge stop, but stay onboard while the train does its route turn around.
Based in Ghent, Belgium, ROA is a street artist who is gaining international acclaim for his giant animals. ROA got his start painting bridges, walls and abandoned buildings throughout Belgium. Since then, his work has popped-up afar afield as Warsaw, Paris, London, Berlin and NYC.
The Libreria El Ateneo Grand Splendid occupies a spectacular 1920s theater in downtown Buenos Aires. El Ateneo has retained the sumptuous theatrical decor, while adding bookshelves and turning the private boxes into intimate reading rooms. Best of all, this literary gem is open 24 hours a day.
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