In the early 1900s, San Antonio was a bustling city filled with color.
But because cameras capable of capturing that color didn’t become common until the 1970s, much of the city’s ancient history was locked away in black-and-white photography for decades.
A new web tool called palette.fm by a Swedish machine learning researcher named Emil Wallner can give us a glimpse of what these photos would have looked like if color photography had become widespread decades earlier.
The Express-News has uploaded a handful of images from its archives as well as those from the UTSA Special Collections Archive to breathe new life into San Antonio’s past.
Wallner told Ars Technica last month that the tool is a two-step process. After uploading an image to the web application, a deep learning model tries to identify the different features of the image. Are there people? A brick wall? A river? Then a second custom model colors the image based on the features it sees.
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Please note that this tool is not perfect. The colors of the original scene are recreated by an algorithm and may not be exact. This is a technology simulation, not a time machine, and should not be used for any purpose other than entertainment.
In this image from the 1920s, readers of “Downtown San Antonio” can look over the shoulder of this stranger at Alamo Plaza.
In October 1909, President William Howard Taft visited San Antonio to dedicate the new military chapel at Fort Sam Houston.
A San Antonio Police Department captain measures the swimsuit of a young woman, believed to be Miss San Antonio 1927 Florence Zoeller at San Pedro Park.
Fiesta sniper victim Dianne Wick is stunned after her left temple was ‘plied’ by a sniper shot on April 27, 1979.
The cast of the 1960 film ‘The Alamo,’ including (from left of helmeted soldier) John Wayne, Linda Cristal, Frankie Avalon, Richard Boone and Pat Wayne, pay their respects to fallen Alamo defenders during a ceremony on Alamo Plaza on October 24, 1960, the morning of the film’s world premiere.
A view of Houston Street in 1930. The Texas Theater and Gunter Hotel are visible on the left and the Majestic Theater is on the right.
A typical summer scene – children playing and fishing in the then undeveloped San Antonio River between 1930 and 1940.
Loil Ellison and his wife, Estella Ellison, and their daughter Estella Mae Ellison stand outside their home at 520 Callaghan Ave., in the early 1930s. In the background are shotgun-style houses on the other across the street at 519 (left) and 521 Callaghan Ave., in a neighborhood demolished to make way for the Victoria Courts public housing project.
James Silas scores on Byron Belk; 1973 ABA basketball.
Downtown San Antonio, seen from the sky on February 1, 1949, looked like someone had dumped a huge barrel of flour on it. This view, looking northeast from a point south of the courthouse, shows the snow cover interrupted only by streets on which traffic had washed away the whiteness.
A bus driver gives change to a passenger on a separate bus in 1949. To the left of the passenger’s head is a small sign that reads “State Law: Front Seats Reserved for White Customers.”
Crowds gather for tacos at Fiesta 1957.
A bus to Hemisfair 1968 in front of the Alamo.
Bob Lemmons, a former slave born in San Antonio, living in Carrizo Springs in August 1936.