1906 Lawrence aerial photo
From Santa Cruz County history wiki
The 1906 Lawrence aerial photo was the first panoramic aerial photograph of Santa Cruz. It was taken on June 24, 1906, by George R. Lawrence with a large wide-angle camera Lawrence had invented and built, held aloft by a string of kites. The camera's large negative allowed usable resolution even when zooming in close to the image. Prior to the Lawrence photograph, five panoramic views of Santa Cruz had been created by artists - with varying degrees of accuracy and levels of detail.
- Peter Nurkse, "Notes on the 1906 Aerial Panorama of Santa Cruz by George Lawrence", online at SCPL Local History Articles.
A digitized copy of the photograph can be downloaded from the Library of Congress.
The early Santa Cruz panoramic pictorial views:
- Panorama 1: Bird’s Eye View of Santa Cruz, 1870, by Charles B. Gifford, hand-colored lithograph (Bancroft Library - screen shot of the online viewer shown at right)
- Panorama 2: Trousset oil painting, 1876, looking west from bluff on east side of San Lorenzo River mouth (on display at MAH History Gallery)
- Panorama 3: Bird's Eye View of Santa Cruz, 1877, a lithograph made from a woodcut by artist unknown, (Bancroft Library, online here).
- Panorama 4: Steinegger Bird's Eye View of Santa Cruz, 1888-89, looking NNE from West Cliff Drive: "Santa Cruz, Cal.” This hand-colored lithograph was published in 1889 by lithographer Henry Steinegger (1831-1917) (Bancroft Library, online here). Stan Stevens researched the history of this work and deduced that the artist was probably E. F. Cook.
- Panorama 5: Heath oil painting, 1893, an 1893 panoramic oil painting by Frank Heath, looking south from south end of the Pasatiempo hills. The large original framed canvas is on display at the downtown library.
- Panorama 6: Swanton Bird's Eye View of Santa Cruz, ~1907, published by Fred Swanton - probably as a promotion for his development ventures. Some of the structures and streets shown were never built. (Bancroft Library, online here)
- Panorama 7: 1906 Lawrence aerial photo
