Husby in the 70's

2015-09-22

Updated: 2015-09-26

There's a fountain at the south end of Husby Centrum. I don't know when the current one was put there, but I kept having this annoying memory of it looking different when I grew up: I vaguely remembered a big block made of red granite. Unfortunately, I didn't own a digital camera then, nor had I been bitten by the photo bug; so there were no way to confirm or disprove that nagging memory. The only hope would be to find old archive photos of the square right about when it was built.

Google Web Search was utterly unhelpful. Google Image Search would only turn up recent photos - until I found the magic keywords: "husby centrum gamla bilder". About one and a half page down I saw a photo that I immediately recognized as being from Husby Centrum, from the 70's or early 80's and close to the fountain! Could there be more?

By ways of Hållbar Stad [a] and the article about Knitting House [b] I found the name of a photographer that had taken at least one photo of Husby Centrum in the 70's: Sune Sundahl. Further googling and a pass by Arkitektur- och designcentrum [c] turned up a selection of his photos at Digitalt Museum [d].

I hit paydirt! There it was - in black and white, but certainly blocky as ever.

Finally, I just wanted to know when the photos were taken. The page at Digitalt Museum listed them as being taken September 30, 1975, but not when during the day. Fortunately, since the ground was paved with square blocks, It was easy to figure out the approximate solar angle, and from that, the time. Photoshop's perspective crop tool was very useful, as it turned the ground into a near-perfect grid from which I could measure the shadow angles.

One more mystery put to rest.