19th-Century S’pore Photos Available From US Library Of Congress, Hi-Res Files Free To Download
Singapore’s known to be a modern city with a relentless pace of change, and the old quickly makes way for the new. Even Singaporeans in their 20s and 30s can recall old hangouts that are gone forever.
For some, this ruthless discarding of the old has evoked a sense of curiosity over what Singapore was like before the congested roads and gleaming skyscrapers.
A foreign source – the United States Library of Congress – has satiated a little of that curiosity with free downloadable images of 19th-century Singapore.
Old photos of early 1900s Singapore digitised & released by New York Public Library since 2016
Several dozen high-resolution images of Singapore from the early 20th century were digitised and released by the New York Public Library on Jan. 6, 2016.
This is part of the library's generous move to make its digital collection as available as possible, having uploaded 187,000 images free for all to use.
All of the photographs — rare and unique as they all are — have become public domain works, which means they are no longer restricted under copyright law.
US Library Of Congress
To find the photos at the US Library of Congress website https://www.loc.gov type in “Singapore” in the search bar. Be sure to select “Photos, Prints, Drawings” in the category field on the left.
After clicking the magnifying glass icon, be sure to refine your results by checking those that are available online. To narrow down your search even further, you can choose photos according to date and location, e.g. 1800 to 1899, and Singapore.
To download the photo, there’s a link below where you can choose 4 resolutions. 3 of them are JPG files, and there’s an option to download it as a hi-res TIFF file that’s as large as 130MB.
Cherian George 4 Feb 22:21
For history buffs: Thanks to Chia Yeow Tong of the Malaysia and Singapore Society of Australia, I've just discovered the US Library of Congress's wonderful collection of freely downloadable 1890 photos of Singapore (including TIFF files as large as 130MB that you can print for display).
