One of the neatest yet subtlest features in my experience is going back through time to see the streetview for a given position over time. It’s especially interesting in Boston’s Seaport or other areas that have seen a lot of development in the last ten years, where you can see the changes over time.
I’m not sure where the option is on mobile (or if it’s even available), but it’s a great feature on desktop.
It's been such an incredible discovery seeing what my neighborhood looked like in 2008. You can quite literally go back in time with this technology and it's nothing but astonishing.
Historical Street View is the main reason I hope Google is still around in a hundred years. It is the single most comprehensive record of the built environment ever assembled, and its simple, broad accessibility belies the depth of its value as a historical tool.
In Chicago, there's no more profound Street View experience than virtually walking the streets of the infamous Cabrini-Green housing project in its twilight of 2007, just as the last tenants had been moved out and the towers were beginning to come down. Even through the grainy, first-generation Street View camera, the haunting specter of neglect and despair comes through clear as day. Jump forward a few years, and the towers disappear, leaving greenfields. A few more jumps, and construction fences appear, quickly followed by condos. Less than a decade later, the area is completely unrecognizable.
And now – can you imagine what it would be like to look back fifty years in Street View? A hundred?
Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration collaborated with the New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of most buildings in the five boroughs of New York City. In 2018, the NYC Municipal Archives completed the digitization and tagging of these photos. This website places them on a map.
I’m not sure where the option is on mobile (or if it’s even available), but it’s a great feature on desktop.
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