2007-05-30

Resource: Animated Map of Historical Development

Trulia Hindsight is an animated map of homes in the United States from Trulia. The animations use the year the properties were built to show the growth of streets, neighborhoods and cities over time.
The title of this post links to a map covering most of Victorian Flatbush, as well as Kensington. On that map, the years range from 1800 to the present. I can only find one little blip for the year 1800; you can find it if you pause the animation, then drag the year slider one year at a time. Then the map shows nothing until 1895

Trulia uses publicly available data for the year of development. For NYC, these data are notoriously unreliable for specific properties; for example, it shows our house was built in the 1930s, although we know it was built in the early 1900s, most likely 1900. Nevertheless, the data are reasonably valid for showing trends.

I'll try to get a good screenshot.

Via OuterB.

2 comments:

Tom Carden said...

Thanks for linking to Hindsight - I'm glad it was of interest!

We've been wondering how accurate the data was since we started plotting the charts - one advantage of just putting it out there is that we get to find out from locals how the accuracy differs from place to place.

Thanks for the tip about NYC in particular. I'll see if I can work this info into the FAQ soon.

Anonymous said...

I checked my native Detroit. Even lower Mack Ave (old slum) it shows developed around the turn of the 20th century. There was a tragic house fire of an 1863 house there with dead children fifteen years ago. Trulia shows NO properties back that far. More ridiculous is that the cities of the Northeast like NY Phillie and Boston NOTHING from the 17th and 18th centuries and not much for the first half of the 19th