Rowntree Wharf and the flats it contains are familiar to many in the city today. But somehow it doesn't seem to have quite the grandeur now that it retained in a 1969 photograph from The Press' archive.

Yorkshire Evening Press writer Ronald Willis wrote an evocative piece to accompany this photograph in the newspaper all those years ago. "Rising to six storeys on a slim tongue of land, dwarfing the backyard industries that surround it, is what Lord Esher has called 'the great warehouse of the Foss'," he wrote.

"On misty mornings a sideways look down any street branching off York's Stonebow, Foss Islands Road or Walmgate reveals the impressive mass of this cathedral of commerce, stranded like a grey leviathan on the marsh.

"Even today (this was in 1969, remember) people sometimes call it Leetham's Mill, though it is 41 years since the family connection was cut and 39 years since flour was milled on the banks of the Foss..."

Lovely stuff, Ronald.

An even earlier photo, dating from 1956, shows the barge Reklaw (yes, that was Walker written backwards) gliding under the arch of Layerthorpe Bridge. It was moving so quietly that it scarcely disturbed the reflections of the surrounding stonework - including the gas tower - in the Foss's calm water.

From Foss Bank to the city centre, and Jubbergate. One day in 1880, the photographer Joseph Duncan paid a visit to the small lane connecting Shambles and Shambles Market with Parliament Street. The wonderful photographs he took there - which have also made their way into our archive at The Press - somehow manage to give a sense of the long history of this very small street.

Originally known as Bretgate (ie the 'street of the Britons') according to the History of York website, by the early middle ages the name had changed to Jubrettegate - possibly a reference to the fact that a number of Jewish families and businesses had established themselves along the lane.

One of Duncan's 1880 photographs shows a group of people in working clothes standing in front of the window of A Wells, broker, of no 9, Jubbergate. The building is instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with this part of York today - it is now Gert & Henry's restaurant.

In a second, upright photograph, Duncan captured the view looking down the length of Jubbergate itself. Today, here, you'll find Timpson's and the Newgate coffee bar. In Duncan's day, it was the Ebor Eating House and J Dalby, the outfitters and specialists in boots and shoes. The building in front of the Ebor Eating House has now been demolished to make way for the access street that runs up to St Sampson's Square.

It is the people standing in the photographs, combined with the cobbled streets and the sepia toning that has come with age, that give these pictures their timeless air. Duncan originally tried to splice his photographs together to give a panorama effect - you can see that they overlap slightly. The fit wasn't perfect, however, so we have separated them today so that you can see each as a standalone photograph.

Stephen Lewis