Newly-Released NYPL Maps Show Beautiful Old Renderings Of Our Area, With A Few Changes

The New York Public Library recently added about 20,000 maps to their online collection, all which can be downloaded and used for free. We found a few maps of our area, lovingly-rendered with a few fun discrepancies to explore.

The map above (intended to be displayed 90° counterclockwise, but rotated for easier computer reading) dates back to 1906, and shows Church Avenue labeled as “Church Lane.” Doesn’t “Lane” conjure up an image of a narrow, quiet street? Strange to think the bustling strip, now full of delivery trucks and cab drivers making illegal U-turns, was ever called such a thing.

This map shows the same streets heading east to west, but ventures south of Cortelyou. There’s Avenue G (now Glenwood Road), Washington and Johnson Avenues (now all Parkville Avenue), and First Street (now E 8th Street). Good thing, since Brooklyn’s already has (one, two, three) those covered.

You can learn more about the changing street names in our area (if we squint, it looks like Stratford, Westminster, Argyle, Rugby, and Marlborough were all still numbered at the time the top map was made) here, then search the NYPL’s full collection of maps here. Particularly savvy folks can even help the library “warp” maps, superimposing renderings of yesteryear onto modern Google Earth images.

If you’ve got the chops, we’d love to see some “warps” from around the neighborhood–and if you spot any cool differences we missed, we’d like to be directed to those, too.

All maps via the New York Public Library