New York City has a long and sprawling history, but looking at the city today, it’s hard to tell what it looked like in the past. Luckily, an enterprising coder has solved that problem by creating a Google Street View map for New York City for the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Developer Dan Vanderkam collaborated with the New York Public Library to plot all the old photos from the Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s collection on an interactive map.
The project, called OldNYC, lets you browse 19th-century New York as easily as you would click around on Google Maps. The collection contains over 80,000 original photographs.
Visit the OldNYC site here, or look below for some of the best photos of the city in the past, marked with their locations.
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| Brooklyn Bridge under construction, 1873 |
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| Fifth Avenue, east side, 1885 |
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| Central Park, 1892 |
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| Wall Street, west across Broad (left) and Nassau (right) Street’s, to Broadway, 1894 |
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| Fifth Avenue at N.E. corner of 46th Street, 1899 |
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| Broadway, west side, north from West 34th Street, 1901 |
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| Skating on the frozen pond at 110th Street and the Botanical Gardens in Central Park, 1905 |
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| Fifth Avenue, north from 25th Street, 1909 |
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| Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street, 1910 |
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| At the racetrack, Pelham Parkway, 1910 |
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| Bryant Park, 1912 |
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| An open-air concert at the Music Pavilion, Central Park, 1912 |
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| 42nd Street & Fifth Avenue, 1913 |
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| Bathing at Coney Island |
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| Queensboro Bridge Connection, 1917 |
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| The Victory Arch on Fifth Avenue at 25th Street, 1918 |
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| Broad Street, 1920 |
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| Broadway & West 34th Street, 1921 |
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| Typical noonday street rush at Sixth Ave., and 34th Street, 1921 |
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| Country house (now JFK airport), Queens, 1922 |
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| 560 Fifth Avenue, at S.W. corner of 46th Street, 1926 |
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| West 42nd Street, 1928 |
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| Broadway, west side, from 34th to 38th Streets, 1928 |
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| Coca-Cola ad Weehawken & Christopher, 1929 |
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| 19 West 34th Street (Fifth Avenue – Sixth Avenue), ca. 1929 |
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| East 86th Street, north side, west of Third Avenue, 1932 |
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| Art exhibit, Greenwich Village, 1933 |
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| Fifth Avenue, East side, and 42nd Street, 1933 |
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| A market scene on Ninth Avenue, near West 40th Street, 1936 |
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| Sixth Avenue & West 42nd Street, 1930s |
(via Insider)