THEN AND NOW: The largest city in every state

The transformations of the past centuries have changed pretty much everything — especially where we live.

Here's a comparison of what the largest city in each state looks like now compared to centuries or decades past. Looking at them, we can see how life has changed. Once upon a time, this country was dominated by railroads and smoke-spewing factories. Now our cities are sleeker and cleaner, but also much, much bigger.

For this list, we counted a "biggest" city as the one with the greatest population in its state today. We compared modern photos to old air-view photos, street-level photos, and even some pre-photography drawings. Keep in mind that some of the older photos, cataloged in the Library of Congress, don't always have precise dates.

Here are the biggest cities in each state, now and then.

Alabama: Here's what the skyline of Birmingham looks like.

The historical district has the best buildings.

The city was much more sparse in 1906.

One feature of older cities are the much wider streets, which often had streetcars instead of automobiles.

Alaska: Anchorage is the state's most thriving city.

Look at those mountains!