New York City

Now feel free to add City Limits to your County Maps — and actually see what’s going on!

January 28, 2021 by Randy Majors

This enhancement pertains to the County Lines on Google Maps and Elevation on Google Maps tools. As you may already know, you can choose to show US City Limits on your county lines map by checking the “Also show US city limits” checkbox in the lower left corner of the map. If you’ve done that before, and happened to be looking in a busy metro area, you get a somewhat jumbled mess of red lines, making it hard to distinguish counties and cities. Here’s what it used to look like: Now, when you check the “Also show US city limits” checkbox, … Read more

Main Map Tools

Viewport to 1836 New York

January 28, 2021 by Randy Majors

Explore present-day New York City with a viewport using an 1836 map. Try Swapping Views using the button in the upper right. Link: http://goo.gl/DRXIdP Courtesy ESRI and the David Rumsey Map Collection.

Main Map Tools

1660 New Amsterdam atop 2013 New York

January 28, 2021 by Randy Majors

The excellent historical blog Ephemeral New York has a post today about the 1660 Costello Plan, referred to by the New York Public Library as the “earliest known plan of New Amsterdam and the only one dating from the Dutch period.” To put the original Costello Plan into a present-day context, I’ve overlaid it on Google Earth and made these screenshots of lower Manhattan (click the images to see larger versions): North is up in this map. Look how much of present day New York would have been underwater back in 1660! Manhattan’s west coast would have been present-day Greenwich Street, … Read more