Speaking of the need for recording heritage

"The ultimate interactive website for armchair architourists: A serial archivist has set up an encyclopedic database of Toronto's built heritage," is an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail, about Bob Krawczyk, who has created a photo database of Toronto's buildings.

We have bits and pieces of that in DC, but it's not codified. The Historical Society of Washington has older photos, as many as 1 million images, including a set of photos taken in 1948 and 1949 by John Wymer (but he didn't photograph every block, unfortunately, especially of commercial districts).

These days there are a great many photographers taking photos and sharing them on Flickr. These photos aren't necessarily a systematic survey, but they are an incredible resource. And as it becomes possible to easily geocode photos, it will become an even more important and useful resource.

From the article:

Eight thousand photographs and counting . . . give or take. Thank goodness for digital photography, or Bob Krawczyk would have one heck of a film-processing bill. Kidding aside, Mr. Krawczyk is a man after the Architourist's heart. Not because of his love of photography, but because of his chosen subject matter: Toronto buildings -- big and small, commercial and residential, beautiful to all or beautiful to only a few.

In 2002, he began snapping pictures of buildings 12 storeys and up and sending the photos to a website devoted to skyscraper aficionados. Eventually, he expanded the scope of his research and started his own site, the impressive Toronto Built.