Fifteen Years of Google Street View

(Many thanks to StLGS publicity and social media director, Laura Mackinson, for writing this week's blog. All images from Google Street View.)

Go back in time with this interesting Google Maps feature!

By now, most everyone has heard of Google Maps, but perhaps you haven't heard of Google Street View. Essentially, Google sends vehicles with 360-degree cameras mounted on top to drive up and down streets taking panoramic photographs. These images are then uploaded to Google Maps and linked to the corresponding locations on the map. Google Street View began in 2007, and the past images were made available beginning in 2014.

What's fun is you can pick an address (like your own) and see how it has changed in recent times. You can also take an ancestor's address from a census or city directory and see what that property looks like today—not just a map or satellite image, but an actual street-level view! To access Street View on a computer, go to https://www.google.com/maps, enter the address in the search field at top left, and hit enter/return. (You do not need to have a Google account to use this feature). You'll then see the map with a red pin placed on the address you're seeking. (See below.)

At bottom right, you'll see a little yellow man. (Below, left, marked with red arrow.) Click on him and drag him onto the map. Streets that have "Street View" will turn blue as you do this. (See the map to the right; little man marked with black arrow; note the blue streets.) Then "drop" the little guy onto the red pin and the screen will change to show you the Street View of that address. (Note that sometimes the view may open facing the wrong direction and you will need to use your mouse to rotate the image to see the address you want. To do that, just click and hold on the image and drag the mouse left, right, up, or down to change the view.)

Time Traveling

While this is a fun way to virtually explore a neighborhood, it can also be interesting to learn how a property has changed over time. Now that you're in Street View, you should see a dark gray box with the address in the top left corner of the map screen. (At top left in each of the images below) At the bottom of this box is a "clock" icon with the words Street View and a date (like Jan 2022). Click there to access past images. There's a sliding timeline (a line with dots) immediately under the photo and you can click on the dots to see different times Google has photographed the property. (See the image on the right.) To expand the past photos to the full window, just click on the photo.

As an example, I searched for the Missouri Botanical Garden at 4344 Shaw Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri. I searched by the address rather than the name of the location, but you can search either way. Google Street View has photos from October 2007 through January 2022 for this property. (Image above on the right is from October 2007; on the left from January 2022.) Clicking through the historical images, you can see how the entrance to the Garden has changed. For instance, in April 2021, the familiar rounded-roof visitor center building is missing—torn down for construction of a new facility. In August 2021 and January 2022, you can see the new building going up. (That new visitor center will have a grand opening this month the weekend of August 27–28.)

Try Google Street View with your address, then try it with your ancestors' addresses (or neighborhoods or areas). It's not limited to the U.S., so if your ancestors lived in Prague or Beijing, or if you've always wanted to visit the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal, you can see these locations as well. Access Google Maps and Google Street View here. Please note that not every address will have images going back to 2007 because that's when Google started taking photographs, and, as you can imagine, it took some years to photograph so much of the world!

In May of this year, Google announced Street View images will be available on their mobile apps and they've developed a new camera that will make imaging easier and more frequent in the future. To read more about it, visit https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/24/23137635/google-maps-15th-anniversary-historic-street-view-new-portable-camera.