As a part of Rochester, Illinois' 2019 sesquicentennial celebration, I began working on a computer-generated model of the village as it appeared approximately one hundred years ago. The model is based on a Sanborn Fire Insurance map from 1917 and a book of photos of the village published by the Orange Judd Publishing Company of Chicago. The purpose of this project is to help bring history alive by adding color to an otherwise black-and-white world, and allowing the village to be explored in ways photographs do not allow. I used Sketchup to make digital models of the buildings which once populated the center of the village. The process began with tracing the outline of the building from the Sanborn map. Next, using historic and contemporary photographs, as available, I established building heights and added windows, doors, and finally trim and other details. Colors were selected based on period paint advertisements as well as contemporary guides to historic colors. Below are some examples of the buildings I recreated for this project.
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This comparison begins to illustrate the end result. While some details still need to be added, such as trees and telephone poles, it is possible to get a sense of how the computer model brings the historic view to life by adding color. The historic photo is from the aforementioned book published by the Orange Judd Company, showing the mill, undertaker, and blacksmith.
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This rendered image of another view on Main Street was created to test some rendering software. While not completely finished or accurate (it is nearly impossible to determine actual paint colors without tests beyond the scope of this project), the image conveys a sense of what it might have been like to see Rochester's Main Street in 1917.
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