Gettysburg National Military Park: Then & Now, Part 26: LBG Garry Adelman

Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide, and Vice President of the Center for Civil War Photography, Garry Adelman. With Barry Martin and Tom Danninger, Garry created the CD, The Gettysburg Park Commission Photos: Then & Now. He is instructing school teachers connected with the Civil War Preservation Trust on the Antietam National Battlefield. Here he shows where Abraham Lincoln stayed at the Stephen P. Grove House located in the trees in the left background, when Lincoln visited the Army of the Potomac on October 3, 1862. This view was taken facing southeast at approximately 11:00 AM on Tuesday, August 17, 2010.

Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Garry Adelman, along with colleagues Tom Danninger and Barry Martin, systematically located the camera positions of the 237 photographs included in the Annual Reports of the Gettysburg National Military Park Commission, 1893-1904. The trio arranged the photos into seventeen sections and present the images in a “then & now” format along with a history of the project and the Park Commission on their CD, The Gettysburg Park Commission Photos: Then & Now. We continue their series with a sampling from each of the seventeen sections.

The Gettysburg National Park Commission (GNPC) issued annual reports from its creation in 1893 until stewardship was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933. The reports, issued each November, covering that year through October, outlined the work of the GNPC for that year. Reports from 1893-1904 were bound into one volume with the photographs that accompanied each report (a practice started with the 1895 report) printed en masse after the text. Together, these images provide a comprehensive view of the battlefield and the Commission’s work available nowhere else. Comparing the images to the same sites today speaks to the important issues of preservation, commercialization, monumentation, and the growth of the GNMP. It’s also simply “cool” to look at then & now photos!

For more in the Then & Now series, please click here.

In today’s Gettysburg Then and Now post, Garry Adelman, Barry Martin, and Tom Danninger show photographs taken in the area of The Wheatfield and Sickles and United States Avenues.

This map, from the Gettysburg Park Commission Photos Then and Now CD , shows us the locations for the Then and Now photographs. In today’s post we show photographs in the area of The Wheatfield and Sickles and United States Avenues.

View #5: “Pleasonton Ave, looking east.” This view was taken in 1901.

The memorial to the 8th Pa Cavalry is at center. Also visible is the headquarters marker of Gen Winfield Scott Hancock. It, as well as all Union headquarters markers, was erected in 1913. This modern view of the previous photograph was taken in 2001.

View #7: “Hancock Ave, at intersection of Pleasonton Ave.” This view was taken in 1896.

14 years after the old view was recorded, the Pa. Memorial which is the largest monument at Gettysburg was erected in the little orchard at left. This modern view of the previous photograph was taken looking south in 2005.

Purchase all the photographs from the Gettysburg National Military Park Commission Reports on this CD.

To see other posts by Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guides, click here.