Albion May 15, 1914 Follow-up

Collection highlights, engagement opportunity, Just for fun

Albion May 15, 1914 Follow-up

Note: This is NOT Albion, but for now and consistency’s sake, I will keep this title. In fact, it is Pittsford NY, near the Cartersville guard gate. The comments following the February 17 post established through your group sourcing that this shows this location in Pittsford in 1914. Lee Rust accepted the challenge to photograph…

will van dorp

February 23, 2026

1–2 minutes

Barge Canal construction, Canal Society of New York, Cartersville Guard Gate, Collection highlights, CSNY, Lee Rust, Pittsford, technology

Lee Rust accepted the challenge to photograph this same location in February 2026, snow on the landscape and all. Once Lee had a contemporary photo, he superimposed the 2026 photo onto the 1914 one and progressively changed the transparency/opacity, blending the two. I didn’t ask what software he used, but maybe he can comment on that. Scroll through these five shots and note the change from the 1914 shot to the 2026 shot. The vertical guard gate frames anchor the two photographs. We start with only the 1914 shot.

With the current photo 25%, you begin to see the trees and hints of color.

At 50%, the 1914 infrastructure is fading and more color appears.

This is 75%, and

and now the current scene is 100%, the 1914 scene is obscurerd

Many thanks to Lee for demonstrating these tools. If the gentleman in the top photo descended from the bridge embankment and stood at the location of the camera lens in 2026, he’d not recognize this Pittsford scene.

Any errors of interpretation are mine.

4 responses to “Albion May 15, 1914 Follow-up”

unabashedc3f8a5d033

February 23, 2026 at 11:59 am

Excellent sleuthing to find the location! Hats off to Lee for the photo comparison. I see the New York Central Bridge is gone, just the piers remain. It appears the highway bridge is gone too? Good stuff here.

Eric Johnson

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1. will van dorp
  
  February 23, 2026 at 12:07 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment, Eric. I agree . . . hat tip to Lee, and there’s lots to see and imagine in the canal corridor and it is not static.
  
  Reply
Lee Rust

February 23, 2026 at 1:27 pm

Thanks! The remains of the concrete bridge abutment are still discernable, so it was pretty easy to match the 1914 point-of-view. The hardest part was holding onto a bush with my left hand while working the camera with the other, without sliding down the snowy embankment into the icy Canal.

The rest was just simple Photoshop stuff… layer the new image over the old and align the guard gate towers, then save five versions at different opacities of the 2026 layer.

Stepping through the sequence on-screen is like time travel. So much has come and gone over the past century. We live so differently from people back then. Our world is always changing.

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Aarav

February 24, 2026 at 6:52 am

History always surprises 📜👀 this was a cool follow‑up! ✨📚

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