Tuesday, January 20, 2015

New York Vintage Maps


The New York Public Library's map collection is a wonderful resource for fans of vintage maps. Thanks to the library's Map Warper project over 10,000 historical maps have now been georectified and can therefore be overlaid on a modern interactive map.

New York Vintage Maps is a little collection I've put together using a few vintage maps of Lower Manhattan in New York. The maps date from 1784 through to an aerial imagery map from 1921. You can browse through the old maps by using the date buttons at the top of the map.

To create the map I used the Leaflet mapping platform and simply used the handily provided URL from the NYPL Map Warper website for the map tiles. To get the URL for the map tiles from the Map Warper website you simply need to click on the 'View Map' link which is provided with each historical map. Then select the 'Export' tab. The URL for the map tiles is listed after the 'Tiles (Google/OSM scheme):' bullet point.

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