Here Are 40,000 Photos Of Old New York Plotted on a City Map

Hope you ’ve already checked out of work on this pre - Memorial Day Friday because this site might eat your long weekend for breakfast . Over 40,000 vintage photograph of New York City from the New York Public Library archives have been geotagged to a Google Map , letting you click aright through chronicle on every street corner .

OldNYCis the baby of software system engineer Dan Vanderkam , who worked on a similar project when he lived in San Francisco ( yep , OldSF ) . Since 2013 Vanderkam has been collaborating with the NYPL staff , where volunteers have been uploading and geotagging photos , then scanning in relevant caption info using ocular recognition software program . The honorable part is that it ’s all editable by the world if someone wants to make an annotation or correction . “ My hope is that user will leave their own anecdote about the photos and improve the quality of data on the website , by ease off inaccuracy and typos,”Vanderkam tells CityLab .

Each dot on the mathematical function give a counterpane of photos taken at or around that very spot at various item in chronicle . you may peruse the thumbnail previews or head on over to the NYPL situation for the original high-pitched - res persona .

Pixwatch2

For object lesson , the dot at Herald Square links up to this 1927 jewel of the elevated string that once ran through the city :

But you could also sieve through the photos to happen the very same train being construct in 1909 :

Where it really gets amazing , though , is when you interchange to Street View on the single-valued function . The dots at each intersection are intelligibly visible , even in Street View , so you ’re able to make some cool side - by - side comparisons of New York City now and then .

Dji Drone