(Screenshot from Atlascope Boston website)
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — A new online resource from the Boston Public Library lets users view the streets of Boston as they appeared as far back as 1867.
Garrett Nelson, Curator of the BPL's Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, told WBZ NewsRadio's Chris Fama the center had "a pretty amazing collection of historical atlases that cover Boston, that show the city at a fine resolution and detail," but they wanted to use technology to help bring them to life.
"We decided to make this collection a little easier to use, that we would digitize it and turn it into a web resource," Nelson said.
His team scanned all the maps in their collection, from Civil War-era Boston to the modern day, to create Atlascope Boston.
The Atlascope interface allows users to select maps from dozens of different years, scroll over them, and zoom in and out—just as you would a modern online map.
To check out the maps, visit atlascope.leventhalmap.org—or try it out at a February 3 "Jamaica Plain by Map" forum at the BPL's Jamaica Plain branch.
WBZ NewsRadio's Chris Fama (@CFamaWBZ) reports
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