While digging through files and photos and archives and collections to gather valuable volumes of information for our ongoing Secret East archival series, we started to find a lot of street photography from around St. John’s, Newfoundland that we had never seen before. St. John’s has always had an appetite for nostalgia, so it is rare to find such comprehensive collections of photos that haven’t already been widely circulated.

As Newfoundlanders, we’ve gotten great at remembering and memorializing historic and culturally significant events. However, it is the everyday lives of Newfoundlanders that we at Secret East have been most interested in exploring in our throwback series. While major political events and news-worthy headlines are ultimately important for the history books, we like to makes things a bit more personal. We want to know the people: where did St. John’s townies shop? Where did they eat? What records were they buying and where were they buying them? Where did they hang out? What live entertainment were they taking in? These details are what contextualize our culture and make up the fibres of our history.

Fitting to our cause, we came across these pages of an old black and white photo magazine put together at MUN in 1984. In the project entitled Street Scapes, a series of photos from east to west of Water Street were profiled, titled only by address and occupancy name. We clipped roughly 100 photos of businesses and buildings that comprise a pretty amazing walk through the downtown district of St. John’s in 1984.

Since we began sharing these photos, we have received a lot of great information and feedback from various parties who were involved with the original project. Street Scapes was an endeavour by CameraMUN supervised by Lynn Byrnes. The project was implemented to train new photographers, and we love that we are now able to give proper credit to the photographers and darkroom technicians: Garry Burry,  Louise Kearney, Russell Kelland, David Maher, Tony Norman, Brian Rideout and Geoff Whelan, as well as to researchers: Regina Abbott, Michelle Bennett, Doug Lacey, Scott Powers.

Take a step back 35 years and experience Water Street in St. John’s, Newfoundland circa 1984:

Happy Gardens, 165 Water Street

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Water Street Continued:

Funland Games Arcade, 201 Water Street

The Hair Factory, 216 Water Street

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Mary Brown’s Fried Chicken, 260-268 Water Street

O’Brien’s Music, 278 Water Street

Woolworth, 351-355 Water Street

Lucky’s Chop Suey House, 364 Water Street

Since we began sharing these photos, we have received a lot of great information and feedback from various parties who were involved with the original project. Street Scapes was an endeavour by CameraMUN supervised by Lynn Byrnes. The project was implemented to train new photographers, and we love that we are now able to give proper credit to the photographers and darkroom technicians: Garry Burry,  Louise Kearney, Russell Kelland, David Maher, Tony Norman, Brian Rideout and Geoff Whelan, as well as to researchers: Regina Abbott, Michelle Bennett, Doug Lacey, Scott Powers.