Those looking for a glimpse of historic New York City have a new resource to help in that quest. Urban Archives, a technology non-profit, released a new online map that connects locations throughout the city to archival photographs.
Users can enter an address or click on a highlighted portion of the map to pull up corresponding photographs. The photographs come from archival institutions across the city including the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, and the New York Transit Museum. More than 100,000 photographs have been mapped. While many of these photos are available through individual institutions’ online databases, there is not other cross-institution aggregate like this. The Urban Archives website also features “City Stories“, which combine maps and archival photographs with narratives about the location.
Previously, the map had only been available as an iPhone app. The new version expands access to anyone with internet. Urban Archives also plans to expand the project to other cities in the future. Currently, the organization only works with cities in New York state.