Monroe Through Time

Monroe Through Time adds a contemporary dimension to Monroe's optics, revealing the landscape and the buildings as they present themselves today.

Most of the graphic images showing what the community looks like now were captured by the intrepid and ubiquitous cameraman John Babina, a retired engineer and the founder of Monroe's classical music radio station WMNR.

His counterpart from yesteryear is the late Frederick P. Sherman, a teacher, horticulturist, town official and relentless captor of the community pictorially when life centered around the farm in the early 1900s and ensuing decades. Working with glass negatives in some instances, Sherman converted his black-and-white visuals into postcards which were sold commercially.

Many of them were mailed with a Stepney Depot, Conn., postmark and a green, one-cent US postage stamp bearing the profile of Benjamin Franklin.

Aerial specialist Bob Cargill and Stepney historian Joel Leneker also contributed images to Monroe Through Time and Babina added to his graphics as a tenacious interviewer and fact-collector.