Gettysburg, Then & Now: Touring the Battlefield With Old Photos [Paperback]

William A. Frassanito (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1577470036 | ISBN-13: 978-1577470038 | Publication Date: October 1996

This tour of historic sites on the Gettysburg battlefield and surrounding area offers both a glimpse into the past as well as modern views of each photographic site. Includes previously unpublished views of the field.

Product Details

• Paperback: 60 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Pubns (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1577470036
• ISBN-13: 978-1577470038
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 8.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > History > Americas > United States > General

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Photo portfolio enriches your touring experience, March 9, 2001

By 

Instrumentalist (Michigan United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Gettysburg, Then & Now: Touring the Battlefield With Old Photos (Paperback)

No doubt you will have seen a few reprints of Mr. Frassanito's photo collections in other Gettysburg books. This 8 1/2 X 11 inch paperback guide has 49 very clear old and modern comparison view photos of the battlefield and town area and one etching. A splendid skematic/map is included that follows the park's official Battlefield Auto Tour Stops and spots the location of where the photo was taken (aligned with the battlefield auto tour), it's number in the book, and the direction of the photo.

18 of the photos are dated 1863, 8 are 1867, 6 are from the 1870's and the remaining come from the 1880 to 1890 period. Highlights include an 1882 photo of the "copse of trees" (High Water Mark) and two other old photos of Union view of Pickets charge (although a bit angled/limited). A caution for those with kids: 7 photos containing dead bodies. There are about 10 photos of the Wheatfield/Devils Den/Rose Farm-Woods area, 3 of Little Round top area, 9 of the town & close vicinity of Gettysburg, and 8 of the East Cemetary/Culps Hill area.

The COMPANION BOOK rates 4-stars, has the same great auto tour map location/direction of the photos but has both darker and less dated photos. 14 photos are dated 1863, 3 from 1866-69, and the rest are from the 1880's to late 1890's. There is a somewhat macabre photo of General John Reynold's family posing at the Slaughter Pen in November 1863 (outside Devils Den). Some good shots include Zieglers Grove and the Jenny Wade house. Kids caution: 5 photos showing dead bodies.

The short write-ups contained with the photos are pretty well constructed. You could take these books out with you and easily glance at the photos and write-up quickly for some quick perspective. All in all I think both of these paperback books would make an excellent reference. If you have to choose only one choose the original Then & Now over the "Companion", but I'd advise that you get both.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Companion for Touring Battlefield, January 13, 2002

By 

K. B. Loss "emeraldbaybooks" (Laguna Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gettysburg, Then & Now: Touring the Battlefield With Old Photos (Paperback)

Our family toured the Gettysburg Battlefield last summer for the first time. Although I'd been told that great effort has been made to preserve/return the battlefield to as close to its original appearance as possible, it was very hard to imagine what it looked like in 1863 because today it is so peppered with monuments, roads and tourists. I've seen a few pictures of Gettysburg from the 19th century with comparison modern photographs, but this book is by far the most comprehensive using this approach. I would have loved to have had this book along with us on our trip. It has a very clear map that shows not only the most popular sites on the standard driving tour but also the location of where each photograph in this book was taken and in which direction the camera was pointing. Six months later, it's been fun to reimagine our tour while looking at the photographs. Frassanito's book will definitely be in our backpack the next time we visit the battlefield. Without doubt, it will increase our imaginative powers as we try to envision what Gettysburg was like during those fateful days in July, 1863.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Revisiting hallowed ground, January 5, 2008

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Gettysburg, Then & Now: Touring the Battlefield With Old Photos (Paperback)

GETTYSBURG, THEN & NOW is best appreciated by those who have a strong, if not fanatical, interest in the U.S. Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg in particular. Almost by definition, the interested reader must either have visited the battlefield, or intends to.

At the beginning of the volume, author William Frassanito provides a mandatory one-page summary of the battle plus another one-page summary of the battlefield's photographic history. Since the author intended that the book could be used as an on-site reference, a tour map of the Gettysburg National Military Park is included, on which are noted the auto tour route and stops in relation to the locations where the photographic pairs, comprising the "then" and the "now" and numbered 1-50, were taken. The direction of view for each pair is indicated.

The volume's front cover features a "then" and "now" image pair with the latter being in color. This is somewhat misleading as there are no color photos in the body of the book, all being in black and white. One page is dedicated to each pair, accompanied by a paragraph of explanatory text, except for pair #41, which spreads over two pages.

The photo pairs are presented roughly in the same order as the actions of the involved troops over the three-day conflict. Each pair directs the readers' sight at or toward:

1. North on South Washington St. (1886)
2. Seminary Ridge from the McPherson Farm (1863)
3. The Gettysburg town from Oak Ridge (1888)
4. The Thompson House, Lee's HQ (1867)
5. The Oak Ridge Railroad Cut and Tate House from town (1863)
6. The Oak Ridge Railroad Cut from the Tate House (1882)
7. Confederate prisoners on Seminary Ridge (1863)
8. The Lutheran Theological Seminary (1863)
9. Southeastward from the cupola of the Lutheran Theological Seminary (1889)
10. Gettysburg town from Seminary Ridge (1867)
11. The Round Tops from Emmitsburg Rd. - the "then" image being an 1863 sketch
12. Northwestward from Little Round Top (1889)
13. Early sightseers on Little Round Top (1867)
14. The Round Tops from the J.T. Weikert Farm (1867)
15. Devil's Den from the Slaughter Pen (1863)
16. Dead Confederates in the Slaughter Pen (1863)
17. A dead Confederate in the Slaughter Pen, a close-up of #16 (1863)
18. A dead Confederate in the Devil's Den (1863)
19. A dead Confederate below Devil's Den (1863)
20. Confederate dead at the edge of Rose Woods (1863)
21. Confederate dead at the edge of Rose Woods (1863)
22. A dead Confederate at the edge of Rose Woods (1863)
23. Southwestward towards the Rose House over "The Loop" (1889)
24. The Round Tops from the Wheatfield (1889)
25. The Peach Orchard from the Emmitsburg Rd./Wheatfield Rd. intersection (1889)
26. Southwestward along the Emmitsburg Rd. from the Klingel House (1889)
27. Northeastward along the Emmitsburg Rd. from the Klingel House (1889)
28. Dead artillery horses at the Trostle House (1863)
29. The Leister House, Meade's HQ (1863)
30. Southward along Baltimore Pike to Powers Hill and the Lightner Farm (1878)
31. Powers Hill over Spangler's Meadow (1876)
32. Spangler's Spring (1889)
33. Union breastworks on Culp's Hill (1867)
34. Culp's Hill from Stevens Knoll (1889)
35. East Cemetery Hill from Stevens Knoll (1889)
36. Toward the Round Tops beyond the Copse of Trees on Cemetery Ridge (1882)
37. The Bryan House (1863)
38. Toward the Round Tops from the National Cemetery (1873)
39. Toward East Cemetery Hill over the Michigan Plot in the National Cemetery (1867)
40. The Gatehouse at Evergreen Cemetery (1863)
41. The National Cemetery on dedication day from the Duttera House (1863)
42. Evergreen Cemetery (1867)
43. The Battlefield Hotel, formerly the Wagon Hotel (1886)
44. Toward East Cemetery Hill from Gettysburg town (1873)
45. Southward down Baltimore St. from Gettysburg town square (1889)
46. The McLellan House hotel on the Gettysburg town square (1870s)
47. Pennsylvania College
48. The Adams County Alms House on Harrisburg Rd. (1885)
49. Toward Culp's Hill over the York Pike Stone Bridge on Rock Creek (1880s)
50. The East Cavalry Battlefield from the Spangler House (1870s)

The date after each indicates when the "then" version of the pair was captured.

To the uninitiated, the visual images will be even less meaningful and more boring than your obnoxious brother-in-law's snaps from his recent trip to Disneyland with his wife and bratty kids. To battlefield pilgrims, however, the photos may perhaps represent something akin to the Stations of the Cross. The author did an admirable job finding the exact, and in some cases obscure, spots from which the original photos were taken in order to capture the comparative "now" views.

Having visited the military park and read several historical narratives about the battle, I was a little surprised and somewhat disappointed that the following two pairs were not included, perhaps because the "then" photos don't exist:

1. The far left of the Union line on Little Round Top (so gallantly held by the 20th Maine)
2. Cemetery Ridge from Seminary Ridge (over which ground Pickett charged)

My one niggling criticism of GETTYSBURG, THEN & NOW is that the "then" implies photos taken immediately after the battle when, as is seen, many were created 10, 20 or even 25 years later. As the images themselves attest, only rocks live that long and remain unchanged, and any particular scene could become quickly blemished by an 1870s Wal-Mart.