3D Reconstruction
Led by xefforts at the Ahmanson Lab, our team is developing a web-based interactive experience of historic Bunker Hill that will allow users to immerse themselves in the lost neighborhood and access stories and information about people and places via archival sources and oral histories.
Our 3D reconstruction is hand modeled using the following historical sources: architectural drawings and sketches created by the WPA in 1940 to assist in constructing a scale model of downtown Los Angeles, with the original materials held by the City of Los Angeles City Clerk, City Archive and Records; aerial photographs from UC Santa Barbara’s Aerial Photography Collection, specifically images from Flight C-7334 (frames 57 and 58) taken on August 14, 1941; historical photographs from the period, primarily drawn from USC Libraries Special Collections, the Huntington Library, the Los Angeles Public Library, the California State Library’s SoCa Digitization Project, and the Getty; and Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Los Angeles (Los Angeles County, California), produced by the Sanborn Map Company in May 1950 (Vol. 1) and held by the Library of Congress.
256 South Bunker Hill: Historical photograph (left),WPA architectural drawing (top right), and our 3D model (bottom right).
To date, our 3D model covers 30 contiguous blocks of the neighborhood, including over 450 individually modeled buildings, yards, surrounding infrastructure, the dramatic hillside terrain that defined the area, and notable landmarks such as Angels Flight and the Second and Third Street tunnels.
Our 3D model serves as the foundation for a number of interactive experiences we have built, each offering a different way to explore and engage with the lost neighborhood.
