1950’s Pics of Fleet Street?

Have you tried the Irish Architectural Archive?

Postcard dealers such as Ian Whyte

@phil wrote:

Have you tried the Irish Architectural Archive?

Yes – I was there today – a great service but only one aerial photo of the relevent place.

I found another on a thread here on Archeire but that’s it so far.

Might be a long shot, but maybe try The Irish Times. Given their old location they might just have some shots of the area on record

@phil wrote:

Might be a long shot, but maybe try The Irish Times. Given their old location they might just have some shots of the area on record

Thanks Phil,

I tried them today – their files are being catalogued after the move but they could tell me that they didn’t have anything on Fleet Street prior to the 70’s.

I have tracked down a source who may be able to check the old Rex Roberts oblique air photos – the area was covered in the 50’s as far as I know. Also intend to check the Nat Library.

The Irish Times had a major fire, sometime in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s which destroyed most of their early photgraphic records.

A long shot might be to try the ESB, who have had major buildings in this street for a very long time.
What photo archives they have I do not know.

It is a salutary lesson to look through the photo archives, either in the IAA or in the National Library to see how few photos there are of some streets and what is worse, how so many photos are taken by generations of photographers who stand in exactly the same spot, to take exactly the “same” view, decades apart, using the classical approach to photo composition, so that buildings in the “wrong” place are just never recorded at all.

Very good point. And almost no early pictures of parts of the city with crowded or narrow streets, like Temple Bar.