Pictures of Helsinki circa 1907

The Helsinki City Museum has a nice online exhibition of pictures taken of Helsinki sights by Signe Brander in the early 1910s. The pages are in Finnish, but navigation is pretty simple. There are two tours ("kierros"), each of which have several objects ("kohde"), each of which feature several pictures ("kuva"). "Panoraama" takes you to a panorama view and "animaatio" to an animation view, where applicable.

To keep things political, here's an animation (of sorts) of a workers' May Day parade.

Brander has captured the bleeding edge of early 20th century political advertising, from prior to the first unicameral parliamentary election in 1907.

Here's a shot of the inaugural service held at St. Nicholas' Church (a.k.a. the Helsinki Cathedral) and here's a parade from the church to the Imperial Palace (a.k.a. the Presidential Palace).

There's also a pretty panorama view from the church dome.

Finally, for those interested in a bit of social realism, Brander also photographed Töölö and the area's ordinary folk.