This much we know about Frederick Theodore Wagner: He was born in Pittsburgh in 1870 to German immigrants who lived in the Hill District. At the age of 30, he married Margaret Smith, with whom he had four children. Not long after her death in 1910, he married her sister Elizabeth, with whom he had two more children. He worked as a clerk for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and on Oct. 22, 1956, in a town in Eastern Pennsylvania, he died.

	Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh For Pittsburgh's Bureau of Health, the city photographer visited the Hill District on Sept. 3, 1914 and captured this image, showing the common courtyard and privy between two tenements. The location and names of the subjects are unknown. Click photo for larger image. On the Internet Historic Pittsburgh Making of America

A fulfilling but unremarkable life, it would seem.

Except that beginning in 1903, Wagner had another passion: He exposed more than 500 glass negatives, photographing his family, friends, neighborhood and beyond. He aimed his cameras at buildings and bridges under construction, at baseball teams and banquets and babies in baptism gowns, at his father in his Civil War uniform in 1903 and his nephew in a Doughboy uniform in 1918.

The fragile negatives might have been lost forever, but thanks to Wagner's family, they were preserved and donated in 2000 to the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Even though the family no longer lives in the area, "they wanted to see the images returned to Pittsburgh," said David Grinnell, acquisitions archivist for the society's Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.

Now, 128 of them can be viewed online, part of a collection of 6,300 photographic images on the Historic Pittsburgh Web site. Since its launch by the University of Pittsburgh in 1999, the Web site has become a digital gold mine for family historians, novelists, students, scholars, architects, genealogists and other researchers digging into the region's past.

With new material added over time, the site now also comprises 521 books from the 19th and early 20th centuries, 26 volumes of plat maps from 1872 to 1939, census records from 1850 to 1880 and a timeline of city history from 1717 to 2003.

Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania On Aug. 23, 1908, Frederick Theodore Wagner made this pastoral portrait of his son, Theodore, wife Margaret (center) and daughter Marguerite. The family lived for many years at 539 Watt St. in the Hill District. Click photo for larger image.

The F. Theodore Wagner Collection is one of 26 collections of photographic images added since October, depicting a century of southwestern Pennsylvania history from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s -- from the Lyon, Shorb & Co. ironworkers of the 1860s to the demolitions and construction of Renaissance I.

Speed-browsing through page after page of postage-stamp-size photographs on the Web site is illuminating and intoxicating -- a rush of images to be devoured now, savored later. To whom do we owe this bountiful, virtual window into the past, one that few cities enjoy?

About three years ago, project manager Ed Galloway, who heads the Digital Research Library at Pitt's Archives Service Center in Point Breeze, surveyed the Web site's users, partly to determine what should be added. The overwhelming response? Photographs, and lots of them.

Two years ago, Galloway received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, one that would allow Pitt to collaborate with its original Historic Pittsburgh partner, the Heinz History Center, and Carnegie Museum of Art. The goal of the grant was to provide access to 7,000 images on the Historic Pittsburgh site, a total they'll reach in a few months. Thereafter, Pitt will add about 100 images a month.

Carnegie Museum's collections include 440 photographs taken over 40 years by Pittsburgh Courier photographer Teenie Harris, documenting everyday life in the city's African-American communities. Other prominent photographers represented include Ralph W. Johnston, Esther Bubley, Harold Corsini, Hugh Torrance and Clyde Hare.

	Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania Christ Methodist Episcopal Church, at the corner of Penn Avenue and Eighth Street, is in the background of this circa-1889 street scene photographed by James Benney III. In 1889, Benney was an iron broker living at 78 Cedar Ave., Allegheny City (North Side). Click photo for larger image.

But many more of the Web site's images are anonymous, including those in the largest group -- 1,285 shots taken between 1901 and 1969, all part of the Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection. Commissioned by the city's Public Works, Child Welfare, Health, Law and other departments, they document building, road, bridge and sewer construction, parks and recreation facilities, accident locations, athletic events, mayors, tenement living and a mosaic of neighborhood views. The entire collection of more than 150,000 glass plate and film negatives shot by city photographers resides in Pitt's Archives Service Center.

The other sizable collection comes from the Allegheny Conference on Community Development at the Heinz History Center: 1,123 images from 1875 to 1981, many documenting big changes wrought through plans and models, demolitions and construction. Life's little moments are captured, too: a tree planting in Lawrenceville in 1951, ice skating at North Park in 1964, a visit to Buhl Planetarium in 1955.

In the Pittsburgh Public Schools Collection, many 19th-century school buildings, long absent from their communities, live again in individual portraits, like the Strip's O'Hara School at 25th and Smallman streets, shown in 1916. Thanks to volunteers and staffers at the Heinz History Center, many of the images in its 11 collections on the Historic Pittsburgh Web site have extensive, detailed captions; in this one, we learn the three-story, red brick school closed in 1943 and was razed the following year. Some of the 686 images in the schools collection show interior views of students at work, like those in a shorthand class at South Hills High School around 1953.

The idea for the site came from Rush Miller, director of Pitt's library system, who wanted the university to have an Internet presence that many people would use.

"Tens of thousands come to the site," Galloway said. "From surveys, we believe the No. 1 type of user is the family historian or genealogist who cares about their roots and maybe the homes they grew up in."

	Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania In the 1860s, Cargo's Photographic Rooms recorded the men and boys of Lyon, Shorb & Co.'s Sligo Iron Works in Birmingham (South Side). Depicted here is mason tender C. Paultine, posing in work clothes and equipment. Click photo for larger image.

Historic Pittsburgh was modeled primarily on the University of Michigan's expansive Making of America Web site, comprising more than 11,000 books and 50,000 journal articles from the 19th century -- all searchable by words within the texts, as is Historic Pittsburgh.

Gary Link, corporate records manager of the architectural firm Astorino, used the site extensively while researching his first novel, "The Burnt District," a mystery set during Pittsburgh's Great Fire of 1845. When the Web site came online, it meant he no longer had to spend hours reading noncirculating texts in the Pennsylvania Room of Carnegie Library in Oakland.

"And because of the search capabilities, instead of poring over books page by page to find a specific item, I can do a keyword search and it lists all of the entries in all of the books where that word comes up. This allows me to research on the fly as I am writing," said Link, who is researching his second novel, set the following year. "If I need to know a detail about something in the city in 1846, whether it is a person, a business, a street, a building location or government office, with a few clicks I can search 19th-century city directories and find the answer. And then I resume writing. Amazing."

For researchers, that function has opened up opportunities to make connections and associations unavailable and unimaginable to previous generations -- and in the blink of an eye.

Shame on us if we don't make the most of it.

Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania One of many images from Renaissance I in the collection of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development is this photograph of Downtown's H.K. Porter Building, under construction on Nov. 26, 1957. Designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, it was the headquarters of the H.K. Porter Co., which manufactured locomotives. It went out of business in 1991; today the building is the Federal Home Loan Bank Building. Click photo for larger image.

Teenie Harris (Historic Pittsburgh) This undated portrait of an unidentified toddler on an ottoman was taken by Teenie Harris, who, from the 1920s to the 1970s, covered everyday life in black communities for the Pittsburgh Courier. More than 80,000 Harris images are in the collection of Carnegie Museum of Art; 440 are on the Historic Pittsburgh Web site. Click photo for larger image.