Emporis

[sowanome]

I was currently working on a new thread for the Heights/Washington Ave Section and I came across this site that has various photos (Have Fun):

http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/ci/bu/cs/?id=101031

[editor]

Emproris. *shudder*

[Highrise Tower]

CoStar Group has officially retired and closed Emporis. You are not even allowed to search the old database, it is completely offline. So glad that HAIF's database of (Houston) buildings is larger and better. 

https://forum.newyorkyimby.com/t/emporis-is-folding/21779

Dear Emporis Community Member,

I am writing to let you know that we have made the decision to retire the Emporis community platform. This change will take effect on Tuesday 13th September 2022.

Following the retirement you will no longer be able to access Emporis.

This decision was not made lightly. For more than twenty years, Emporis (and its predecessor site) has served as a platform for community members to share data, information and of course, great imagery of some of the tallest buildings and skyscrapers across the globe. I would like to thank you for your contributions over the years.

CoStar Group acquired Emporis in November 2020, recognising the truly global nature of the data in Emporis, and since the acquisition we have integrated much of that data into the global CoStar information platform for the benefit of our client base of brokers, owners, and lenders.

[Ross]

9 hours ago, Highrise Tower said:

CoStar Group has officially retired and closed Emporis. You are not even allowed to search the old database, it is completely offline. So glad that HAIF's database of (Houston) buildings is larger and better. 

https://forum.newyorkyimby.com/t/emporis-is-folding/21779

Dear Emporis Community Member,

I am writing to let you know that we have made the decision to retire the Emporis community platform. This change will take effect on Tuesday 13th September 2022.

Following the retirement you will no longer be able to access Emporis.

This decision was not made lightly. For more than twenty years, Emporis (and its predecessor site) has served as a platform for community members to share data, information and of course, great imagery of some of the tallest buildings and skyscrapers across the globe. I would like to thank you for your contributions over the years.

CoStar Group acquired Emporis in November 2020, recognising the truly global nature of the data in Emporis, and since the acquisition we have integrated much of that data into the global CoStar information platform for the benefit of our client base of brokers, owners, and lenders.

I don't think I ever looked at Emporis, but it sounds like they took 20+ years of member contributed data to sell to the commercial users of their product, while the people who were doing all the work get shafted. I could be wrong, but that's what it sounds like.

[ChannelTwoNews]

23 hours ago, Highrise Tower said:

CoStar Group has officially retired and closed Emporis. You are not even allowed to search the old database, it is completely offline. So glad that HAIF's database of (Houston) buildings is larger and better. 

https://forum.newyorkyimby.com/t/emporis-is-folding/21779

Dear Emporis Community Member,

I am writing to let you know that we have made the decision to retire the Emporis community platform. This change will take effect on Tuesday 13th September 2022.

Following the retirement you will no longer be able to access Emporis.

This decision was not made lightly. For more than twenty years, Emporis (and its predecessor site) has served as a platform for community members to share data, information and of course, great imagery of some of the tallest buildings and skyscrapers across the globe. I would like to thank you for your contributions over the years.

CoStar Group acquired Emporis in November 2020, recognising the truly global nature of the data in Emporis, and since the acquisition we have integrated much of that data into the global CoStar information platform for the benefit of our client base of brokers, owners, and lenders.

I would say I was surprised, but I really wasn't. That announcement from CoStar a while back sort of tipped me off that something like this would happen eventually. The letter / email was out for only a day before they pulled the plug. 

I had helped edit and photograph for the site since March 2004, but was a follower of the site it since it was skyscrapers.com back around 2000 or so. Photographers did okay when photos sold, but of course, you're at the mercy of the customer's demand. 

Things changed over the years. Initially, you had to apply for the cities that you would edit and photograph for and there would be a brief bio for that person's knowledge for a given city. Houston had no native editor so that was the first one I signed up for. There were some really cool features as well. I recall adding the super neighborhoods to the city database since there was a function that allowed for them to be drawn as polygons onto a map and then the structures could be geo-located more specifically which I liked. There was also a brief period where they had a newswire service that allowed editors to write brief CRE stories about projects that were announced or significant issues regarding a building or project, which I contributed to on occasion.

Years later, they did away with that and opened up the membership a bit more. People didn't have to sign up for certain cities and could add structures pretty much anywhere and the same for photos as well. Some of those neat functions were removed but it made it a bit more open for folks to contribute which was a good thing overall. It was nice to have a group who had a passion for what they did - even if it was volunteer work. 

I loved going out and shooting the construction over the past decade or so. Thankfully, I saved all of the 6000+ photos that I contributed during my time with the site and I of course can still post here when I am in the area so it's not all bad news.

My goal was to make sure that Houston (and the metro) had good, comprehensive representation on the site. Houston alone had nearly 5000 structures of different types listed from skyscrapers to water towers to sculptures. This was easily several times any other city in Texas and bested most of the major cities in the US or anywhere for that matter. I particularly enjoyed researching the projects from the 70s and 80s that were proposed but never came to fruition. Many of those were not catalogued anywhere else so other than my microfilm prints from the Post archives, they may not be viewable anywhere now. I may need to start a bunch of threads in that unbuilt section in that case... heh.

Still, I would love to be able to work on a database & contribute data the way I was able to on that site. To me it was fun finding the connections in terms of companies that were involved in projects or how companies had evolved or changed names over time - to see which version of a firm designed a structure and such. 

Anyway, I suppose this was my way of letting it out. I wasn't terribly thrilled with how it was handled but it is what it is. I'd thought of applying for one of their photographer jobs with CoStar since that was pitched in the letter. We'll see what becomes of that.

[JLWM8609]

I hate that. They had quite a few historic photos from the 70s and 80s of Downtown Houston. 

[ChannelTwoNews]

On 9/23/2022 at 11:06 PM, JLWM8609 said:

I hate that. They had quite a few historic photos from the 70s and 80s of Downtown Houston. 

That's very true. One of the few places there were good photos of the Chase Tower under construction that I was aware of.

The good news is that some of them still exist.

The photographer's period photos of Fort Worth appear to be in the Library Archives there. Some of his Minneapolis photos are digitally preserved and available online. Wish the Houston photos were available somewhere else.

[JLWM8609]

8 hours ago, ChannelTwoNews said:

That's very true. One of the few places there were good photos of the Chase Tower under construction that I was aware of.

The good news is that some of them still exist.

The photographer's period photos of Fort Worth appear to be in the Library Archives there. Some of his Minneapolis photos are digitally preserved and available online. Wish the Houston photos were available somewhere else.

I was able to access some of the photos using the wayback machine. It's a slow process, but it's the only way now.