submersible dirigible

~ Monday, February 22 ~
Permalink
My home from above (in 1924) Above the Past Published: February 21, 2010 From time to time, New Yorkers are reminded of the age of this city and the way the past penetrates the present. You see it in the grid of streets, the fabric of buildings — especially the oldest buildings that, for a moment, seem to loom out of some distant year and then recede into the light of the day you’re rushing through. We cannot return to some former year, but we can at least get an interactive glimpse of one. Thanks to the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications — and its innovative NYCityMap — it is now possible to revisit 1924 from above. Just follow these simple instructions: At the NYCityMap Web site, click on the camera at the top of the page and move the slider beneath it back to 1924. The interactive city of 2010 fades away to reveal an aerial view of the five boroughs assembled from photographs that have been digitally stitched together. The effect is not as simple as it sounds. The old city doesn’t merely replace the new one. It seems to resurface from within it. Gone are Manhattan’s perimeter highways — the F.D.R. and the West Side Highway. On the east, the blocks run right up to the water’s edge, and on the west, they terminate in a hardworking dockside, with ships at berth where Battery Park City now stands….

My home from above (in 1924)

Above the Past

Published: February 21, 2010

From time to time, New Yorkers are reminded of the age of this city and the way the past penetrates the present. You see it in the grid of streets, the fabric of buildings — especially the oldest buildings that, for a moment, seem to loom out of some distant year and then recede into the light of the day you’re rushing through.

We cannot return to some former year, but we can at least get an interactive glimpse of one. Thanks to the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications — and its innovative NYCityMap — it is now possible to revisit 1924 from above.

Just follow these simple instructions: At the NYCityMap Web site, click on the camera at the top of the page and move the slider beneath it back to 1924. The interactive city of 2010 fades away to reveal an aerial view of the five boroughs assembled from photographs that have been digitally stitched together.

The effect is not as simple as it sounds. The old city doesn’t merely replace the new one. It seems to resurface from within it. Gone are Manhattan’s perimeter highways — the F.D.R. and the West Side Highway. On the east, the blocks run right up to the water’s edge, and on the west, they terminate in a hardworking dockside, with ships at berth where Battery Park City now stands….