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This incredible map that lets New Yorkers see vintage photos of their street corners

Christian Storm   

This incredible map that lets New Yorkers see vintage photos of their street corners
Thelife2 min read

Old photos have an uncanny way of connecting us to our past and creating a window to see back in time. And fortunately for a city like New York, with such a rich history, there are a lot of vintage photographs that capture days gone by.

But never before have they been visualized like this.

The New York Public Library, along with some history buff developers, recently launched OldNYC.org, which features an interactive map that plots thousands of photos to the location they depict. Each location is marked by a red dot. As you can see below, there's a lot of photos - one or more for nearly every street corner.

oldnyc

OldNYC.org

Once you click on a red dot, you're presented with one or more photos of that street and specific street corner. The photos come from the New York Public Library's Milstein Collection and date from the 1870s to the 1970s, with a many of them taken during the 1920s to the 1940s by photographer Percy Loomis Sperr.

oldnyc2

OldNYC.org

Especially for someone familiar with New York City, it's the type of website you can spend hours on. I immediately began looking up places where I've lived and worked. The church next to my old apartment on East 11th St. still looks the same!

11th st

NYPL

NOW WATCH: Here's what New York City looked like in 1905

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