A shop in a little Southern Italy town in 1910

[doublemike]

This shop, in Bari (Italy), exists yet!
This foto is from 1910

[n2wheelies]

GOOGLE STREET MAP it!

[PeterF]

Yes, please give us the street address or google street view URL so we can do the before-and-after look!

I love doing that from addresses given on dealer tags found on phonographs.

[Phonoboy]

Yes, please give us the street address or google street view URL so we can do the before-and-after look!

I love doing that from addresses given on dealer tags found on phonographs.

That's an interesting idea.

[doublemike]

Well... I apologize because that shop closed some months ago and I didn't know. The shop was in a street that actually is forbidden to cars, for this reason I can't post the Google Street View image. The address was: Via Sparano 99, Bari, Italy.
The shop was where is the red arrow.

[Phonofreak]

That is one nice photograph. I love those European phonographs. It makes want to play my Caruso and other Italian records and eat a good pasta dinner. Very nice.
Harvey Kravitz

[VintageTechnologies]

I love doing that from addresses given on dealer tags found on phonographs.

So, I am not the only one that does that. Often, the buildings no longer exist, or at best the facades have changed. Last year I bought an early Victor I with a celluloid dealer tag from the Eastern Talking Machine Company. I Googled and found the building still exists, across the street from the Boston Commons park. Talk about prime location! I also managed to find a picture of the building from the same period that my Victor was sold. http://www.victor-victrola.com/Eastern1.htm

[Retrograde]

I love doing that from addresses given on dealer tags found on phonographs.

So, I am not the only one that does that.

Hardly... I've checked various addresses on old machines and ephemera. Google maps & street view are pretty useful and intriguing.

If you can think of something to do or look for on the internet, chances are a thousand people or more have already done it and have a video for you to watch of them doing it.

[PeterF]

More often than not, I'm disappointed. Whole soulless blocks have replaced rows of shops in many cities, and in a way it's made worse when you see that the block adjacent to your target has survived.

Or there's a vacant lot.

But every so often you find the little store front, still there. Maybe it's a posh restaurant or fancy boutique, or a nail salon in a run down part of town, or even a boarded-up ruin. Sometimes, for larger businesses, you still see the name carved up over the entrance.

It's most fun when vintage photographs and postcards show up on eBay that bear address information. With those, one can navigate to the exact angle of the original photo. Sometimes only a street name is given, so using landmarks helps as you "drive" up and down the street. Go through Edison Phonograph Monthly and you can play this game quite a bit.

Just another fun subset of our hobby...