Vintage Street View Imagery

Imagine if Google Maps offered a way to view Street View panoramas of cities as they looked in the past. Unfortunately Google only began capturing Street View images in 2006 and 2007. Photography itself, however, was invented in the 19th century, which means we can explore vintage photographs to glimpse our cities as they used to exist.

In fact, one American photographer, Ed Ruscha, practically pioneered Street View photography. In the 1960s he mounted a motorized 35mm camera on top of a pickup truck and drove up and down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, capturing a unique photographic record of this iconic street. He repeated this project in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The result is an incredible time capsule, documenting the evolution of Sunset Boulevard across five decades.

Sunset over Sunset presents Ed Ruscha’s photographs of Sunset Boulevard across five decades, stitched into continuous photostrips that capture the changing landscape between Doheny Road and North Alameda Street. Using a strip map of Sunset Boulevard you can browse all five complete historical photostrips of the street from each of the five decades. 

Sunset Over Sunset integrates Ruscha’s images with historical data, such as city directories, census records, and local newspapers. Using the strip map, users can explore specific addresses, and uncover their history through their associated historical data. A 'Stories' section also picks out and explores some of the most interesting urban developments which have taken place on the 'Strip' since the 1960s.

The 12 Sunsets website also allows users to explore Ed Ruscha's photographs of the Sunset Strip overlaid on an interactive map. In this presentation, an interactive map is flanked by Ruscha's vintage photos of each side of Sunset Boulevard. Simply click on a year to change the date of the street-view photos shown on the map, and use the "Flip" button to rotate the page 180 degrees.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city that can be explored through vintage street-view photography; New York City also boasts extensive collections of historical street imagery.

1940s NYC and 80s.NYC are two fantastic interactive maps that let you explore vintage photographs of New York City street scenes. These photos, captured by the New York City Finance Department in the early 1940s and again in the early 1980s, document every building across the city’s five boroughs. Originally taken to assess property values, these images now serve as invaluable time capsules of New York’s urban landscape.

These interactive maps allow you to explore New York’s streets as they appeared in the 1940s and 1980s, giving you the chance to see how your favorite neighborhoods have transformed (or perhaps remained the same) over the past eighty years.