55 Panoramic Photos Of American Cities In The Early 1900s

These vintage images of American cities in the early 1900s capture everything from the ruins of San Francisco just after the 1906 earthquake to the barely-developed patch of desert that would soon become Las Vegas.

Today, taking a panoramic photo is as easy as pressing a button on our phones. But in the early 20th century, though panoramic illustrations had existed previously, panoramic photographs were a new and revelatory way of capturing our world.

Furthermore, this new photographic technology emerged just as American cities began to grow at unprecedented rates. Following the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution transformed America’s urban landscapes. Shockingly tall buildings went up in New York and Chicago, oil fields led to boomtowns across the West, and patches of desert started t