Modern Federal Architecture

The archive, brought forward

Photographs of the nineteenth century in colour, and the clips animated from them. Where the original black-and-white photograph is known it is shown first, so you can see what was interpreted and what was invented. These are interpretations, not records — the photograph is the evidence, the colour is a guess. Every file carries its Content Credentials, so what you download can still prove how it was made.

The architects behind the buildings — their lives, the works we hold, and what else they designed (via Wikidata). Click any to open their profile.

Ways in

The curated story

The Timeline

Dated, sourced facts grouped by project — the great fires and the military hand, the world's fairs, balloons & the first air raids, the survivors. The part no stock archive has.

Enter the timeline →

In motion

The Films

Restored motion pictures — the fairs and city actualities.

Watch →

Both collections

The Survivors

Buildings that outlived the fires — and still stand today.

Cross over →

Every place, mapped

See it on the map

Open the full map →

Explore the collections

Pick a collection to dive in — every item is real, sourced photography & film (Library of Congress, Internet Archive, David Rumsey), 1800–1915.

By the numbers

Every film in the archive — world's fairs, city panoramas, street scenes, and architecture, 1894–1915 (Library of Congress & Internet Archive). Click any clip to play it in the browser; filter by collection or decade.

Dated facts pulled from the official reports — construction milestones, costs, contracts/orders, financing, openings — each with the exact source passage. Click a row to read its quote; use the dropdowns to focus on one collection or one kind of event.

1915

Window

Drag the slider to move through time. Set Window to ±N years to see only what's happening around that moment (the fire, then the rebuild); "All years" shows everything up to that year. Use the collection chips to filter by type — fairs, asylums, banks, government, and more (click to toggle, "All" to reset). Click a number-cluster to flip through all its photos in the lightbox; scroll/zoom the map to break clusters apart by region. Hover a single pin to enlarge, click to open. Square pins are photos/prints; round teal pins with a ▦ badge are maps & plans of that place — both move with the time slider, so you see photos and maps of an era together without switching views. Needs internet for map tiles.