Back in time to the streets of New York – Tribune de Genève

A new smartphone application allows to go back in time to the streets of New York and compare the city today to what it once was, thanks to over 100 years of archives gathered on a map interactive.

the application OLDNYC ( “old NYC”) was created on the initiative of the famous New York public Library (NYPL) and is available on iOS since May 9.

with a geolocation system, the user can access the vintage photographs of buildings to which it is located. The approximately 40,000 photographs and drawings collected by the NYPL to complete the application and allow a comparison to New York today to that of the years 1870 to 1970.

Trams Times Square

by browsing the map, we see especially the tower of Rockefeller Plaza under construction in 1932, trams through a Times Square 20s already lined its famous advertising displays, so that a crowded beach at Coney Island in Brooklyn in 1937.

most of the photos are dated, signed and captioned, which also provides information on the architecture and history of New York. Along Central Park on 5th Avenue, you can admire the prestigious Plaza Hotel in its current version built in 1907, and the first Plaza, located at the same address between 1894 to 1905.

“The collections of archives from different sources, the most important is a collection commissioned by the public Library of New York itself between 1920 and 1940, “told AFP Shana Kimball, 38, in charge of program development department public dissemination of the NYPL archive.

data Collection

It took four months to two young developers, Christina Leuci and Orian Breaux, 22 and 26, to make the application. “The most difficult was to collect data,” says Orian Breaux AFP.

“We want to further expand the concept” to “adding more context to the photos” by facilitating sharing on Instagram with a mix of current and old New York, tells the young developer, which plans even “using virtual reality goggles.”

of a total of 700,000 records available at the Library public New York, about 200,000 are in the public domain. “The laboratory technology NYPL develops various interactive tools for about a year and a half,” continues Shana Kimball. “We can not integrate all our archives but we want to share a maximum.” (afp / nxp)

(Created: 5/21/2016, 1:09)