7 ms·

Street View of 80s NYC

282 points by mwexler 9y ago

52-6F-62 9y ago
Nicely done! This is a great idea! I hope those photos from the 30s are digitized so they can receive the same treatment
- unclewaltr 9y ago
  From what I've seen of the 1930s/40s tax photos, they're much better quality as far as framing. Not sure if this is the case across the board, but the copies I looked up were pretty consistently better. But you have to either go in to the municipal building to look at them or order them online.
colordrops 9y ago
Seems that there would be quite a bit of historical value to getting everyone to digitize their personal photos and upload them to a shared repository. Has there already been such an effort?
- KGIII 9y ago
  Not that I know of. Without some way of knowing where and when they're from, I'm not sure how useful the data would be. It'd make an interesting project. During WWII the UK government (maybe the US? I'm unable to find a reference but the search terms are pretty generic) requested pictures and postcards from people who'd taken recent trips into Europe. They wanted them for intelligence reasons - I think it was the UK. That's the closest thing I can think of, where there's been a request for massive photos. They wanted people to include information about locations and dates, as I recall. Someone here might be a historian and know more details than I do. But, it seems like it'd be a large pile of data and work. Unless they knew when and where they came from, I'm not sure how much value they'd have - other than aesthetics.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > But, it seems like it'd be a large pile of data and work. Unless they knew when and where they came from, I'm not sure how much value they'd have - other than aesthetics. You're right, its a huge pile of work. Without the geotag and temporal EXIF data, you're relying on machine vision/structure from motion (think https://mapillary.com https://mapillary.com) to rebuild 3D scenes solely from image data. https://help.mapillary.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001770329-Mapillary-s-computer-vision-technology https://help.mapillary.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001770329-Ma... "Mapillary uses a technology called Structure from Motion (SfM) to create and reconstruct places in 3D. By matching points between different images, SfM is able to locate the point in a three-dimensional space and therefore determine its location on the map. The more images there are available for a specific point, the more accurately it can be reconstructed. In addition, SfM creates the kind of smooth transitions between images that you can see in the Mapillary viewer—again, provided that images have been taken within close proximity with enough overlap between them. We also run semantic segmentation on the images. This means that the computer tries to understand what is in the image and assigns a category tag to each pixel. That enables us to detect different areas in the images (such as buildings, pedestrians, cars etc.). Semantic segmentation together with 3D reconstruction enables us to extract 3D positions of objects such as traffic signs and display them on the map. You can get more detailed information on what is currently available on our product page." Disclaimer: No relation, just dig their tech (they're using machine vision to build world models for self-driving cars, using crowd sourced imagery).
    - KGIII 9y ago
      When I typed my reply, I briefly considered if AI/ML/NN might help but then I thought about it. I don't think there will be enough training data and I suspect that existing reference points would be vastly different, and made even more difficult to use by the lack of resolution. But... If it had some initial training done by hand, and by people including what dates and locations they know, maybe it could work backwards? It'd still end up being a HUGE amount of data and the compute power for that would probably be obscene. Which, of course, means I think it's an excellent idea and that someone should do this. I can't even begin to imagine the costs. This might just be the best idea ever, or the worst.
- pizzetta 9y ago
  This is similar to this one for SF http://www.oldsf.org/ http://www.oldsf.org/ Looks like the NYC one has more coverage though.
  - lonewolf_ninja 9y ago
    They also have a similar site for New York: https://www.oldnyc.org/ https://www.oldnyc.org/
- d_somewhere 9y ago
  Just to clarify, these pics are Tax Photos taken by the NYC Department of Records [1]. https://www.oldnyc.org https://www.oldnyc.org does something similar. 1. http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/photos/photos.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/photos/photos.shtml
- rmason 9y ago
  In Detroit they collected family movies taken around the date of the 1967 Detroit riots and created a movie. http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/movies/2017/02/13/detroit-riot-documentary-12th-clairmount-freep-film-festival/97743702/ http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/movies/2017/02/13/d...
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I scanned several thousand of my parent's photos. I'd say a few dozen are of the places they were living. The ones that show recognizable places are pretty interesting to look at though.
- FTA 9y ago
  I can't remember the URL and I'm on mobile, but I recall a a site that did this for USSR photos. It was very interesting to see photos of Chernobyl pre-incident. Unfortunately trying to construct street level from this technique would be difficult as people would have to manually geolocate to an extent, which would generally grow the older the photos are. But I think sites like Mapillary and OpenStreetCam don't have a required freshness of photos, though I've found by accident Mapillary has a minimum at 1 epoch time.
- cjsawyer 9y ago
  I’d have people uploaded them now and have machine learning work out the stitching later. The sooner we collect data, the older the dataset we will have. People won’t have much incentive to upload things after they die.
zonotope 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260897
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mttpgn 9y ago
First thing I noticed was the ReactJS favicon...
- bdon 9y ago
  Good catch, thanks. I use Safari so didn't notice... favicon is updated now.
dmix 9y ago
The South Bronx really was a war-zone. http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8265/-73.9080 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8265/-73.9080 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8107/-73.9180 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8107/-73.9180 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8188/-73.9217 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8188/-73.9217 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8229/-73.9167 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8229/-73.9167 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8102/-73.9194 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8102/-73.9194 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8152/-73.9165 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8152/-73.9165 All of those rent-control incentivized arsons... empty lots with garbage everywhere... dogs running around with no owners visible. Edit: correction, while rent-control played a big role in Brooklyn's housing abandonment rate, South Bronx faced a variety of factors in addition to rent control: > For example, housing abandonment in the South Bronx, probably the most devastated area in the entire city, can be plausibly related to the economics of an obsolete housing stock. The area was one of the most densely populated in the country in the 1940s and 1950s, and the housing stock consists almost entirely of five- and six-story walkups. As population density decreased, fifth- and sixth-story walkup apartments became unrentable at prices sufficient for sound building maintenance, irrespective of rent controls. Arson eventually became the owners' only financially rewarding alternative. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100610/BLOGS01/306109998/a-history-lesson-on-rent-regulation-in-the-1970s http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100610/BLOGS01/306109...
- e40 9y ago
  One of the most stunning parts of the movie Koyaanisqatsi are the demolition of builds in the South Bronx (I'm pretty sure they're there, can someone confirm?). And, the scenes from the movie Wolfen look very similar to the above scenes.
  - bdon 9y ago
    Those were in St. Louis, MO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe
    - e40 9y ago
      Hence the name of the song. (smacks side of head) Thanks.
kwoff 9y ago
I don't know much about NYC, but I've read "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987 novel; heard the movie sucked...). Anyone plot key points in that? (for example: the car scene of Sherman and Maria, the court house in the Bronx, the Park Avenue apartments). If not, whaddaya whaddaya?
apaprocki 9y ago
From having browsed through the tax lot photos in the municipal archives from prior generations, it would be fun to see a split view where you browse around both the 1940s and 1980s at the same time. If you browse around 80s Williamsburg photos it is not a place you would want to be. Now every one of those lots would be a minimum of $1M, with waterfront lots in the tens of millions. Pays to play the long game.
- guelo 9y ago
  In the long game we're all dead.
  - volkl48 9y ago
    Not to mention that not everywhere comes back (in said lifetime at least). The same gamble that paid off in NYC or Boston likely didn't in Baltimore, Detroit, STL, etc. Playing the long game has given you zero or near zero returns for decades there.
sotojuan 9y ago
My building and the pharmacy near me are there and look the same!
martijn_himself 9y ago
How appropriate. I was just watching Simon and Garfunkel perform 'The Boxer' in Central Park, 1981 on YouTube.
subdane 9y ago
There's an AR project in here, I tell ya!
largote 9y ago
New York has really come a long way.
adamzerner 9y ago
I was expecting a street view like Google Maps. The name seems a bit misleading to me.
- dogruck 9y ago
  Not hating, but I was underwhelmed. There must be oodles of old NYC photos sitting in various old home photo albums out there. I hope some day they're all digitized and compiled into something like a VR experience. :-)
somberi 9y ago
As interesting as it is to see some rough areas, most of the areas have not changed much. I looked at the streets where I used to live / currently live - they largely look the same. Some of the shops are still there. Since someone mentioned popular culture references, one movie that I thought "got" the hyper nature of 80s NYC was "Crocodile Dundee". It is of course exaggerated, being a romantic comedy, but it got some parts of it very well.
VirtualAirwaves 9y ago
I miss the old early 80s Times Square! Nice and seedy. (I was born in Brooklyn in 1962)
Vladv26 9y ago
Nice project. I was wondering how the street's were back then in 80s and it is hard to find a photo foe every street. Nice job

282 points by mwexler 9y ago

Nicely done! This is a great idea! I hope those photos from the 30s are digitized so they can receive the same treatment

unclewaltr 9y ago
From what I've seen of the 1930s/40s tax photos, they're much better quality as far as framing. Not sure if this is the case across the board, but the copies I looked up were pretty consistently better. But you have to either go in to the municipal building to look at them or order them online.

colordrops 9y ago

Seems that there would be quite a bit of historical value to getting everyone to digitize their personal photos and upload them to a shared repository. Has there already been such an effort?

KGIII 9y ago
Not that I know of. Without some way of knowing where and when they're from, I'm not sure how useful the data would be. It'd make an interesting project. During WWII the UK government (maybe the US? I'm unable to find a reference but the search terms are pretty generic) requested pictures and postcards from people who'd taken recent trips into Europe. They wanted them for intelligence reasons - I think it was the UK. That's the closest thing I can think of, where there's been a request for massive photos. They wanted people to include information about locations and dates, as I recall. Someone here might be a historian and know more details than I do. But, it seems like it'd be a large pile of data and work. Unless they knew when and where they came from, I'm not sure how much value they'd have - other than aesthetics.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > But, it seems like it'd be a large pile of data and work. Unless they knew when and where they came from, I'm not sure how much value they'd have - other than aesthetics. You're right, its a huge pile of work. Without the geotag and temporal EXIF data, you're relying on machine vision/structure from motion (think https://mapillary.com https://mapillary.com) to rebuild 3D scenes solely from image data. https://help.mapillary.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001770329-Mapillary-s-computer-vision-technology https://help.mapillary.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001770329-Ma... "Mapillary uses a technology called Structure from Motion (SfM) to create and reconstruct places in 3D. By matching points between different images, SfM is able to locate the point in a three-dimensional space and therefore determine its location on the map. The more images there are available for a specific point, the more accurately it can be reconstructed. In addition, SfM creates the kind of smooth transitions between images that you can see in the Mapillary viewer—again, provided that images have been taken within close proximity with enough overlap between them. We also run semantic segmentation on the images. This means that the computer tries to understand what is in the image and assigns a category tag to each pixel. That enables us to detect different areas in the images (such as buildings, pedestrians, cars etc.). Semantic segmentation together with 3D reconstruction enables us to extract 3D positions of objects such as traffic signs and display them on the map. You can get more detailed information on what is currently available on our product page." Disclaimer: No relation, just dig their tech (they're using machine vision to build world models for self-driving cars, using crowd sourced imagery).
  - KGIII 9y ago
    When I typed my reply, I briefly considered if AI/ML/NN might help but then I thought about it. I don't think there will be enough training data and I suspect that existing reference points would be vastly different, and made even more difficult to use by the lack of resolution. But... If it had some initial training done by hand, and by people including what dates and locations they know, maybe it could work backwards? It'd still end up being a HUGE amount of data and the compute power for that would probably be obscene. Which, of course, means I think it's an excellent idea and that someone should do this. I can't even begin to imagine the costs. This might just be the best idea ever, or the worst.
pizzetta 9y ago
This is similar to this one for SF http://www.oldsf.org/ http://www.oldsf.org/ Looks like the NYC one has more coverage though.
- lonewolf_ninja 9y ago
  They also have a similar site for New York: https://www.oldnyc.org/ https://www.oldnyc.org/
d_somewhere 9y ago
Just to clarify, these pics are Tax Photos taken by the NYC Department of Records [1]. https://www.oldnyc.org https://www.oldnyc.org does something similar. 1. http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/photos/photos.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/photos/photos.shtml
rmason 9y ago
In Detroit they collected family movies taken around the date of the 1967 Detroit riots and created a movie. http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/movies/2017/02/13/detroit-riot-documentary-12th-clairmount-freep-film-festival/97743702/ http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/movies/2017/02/13/d...
maxerickson 9y ago
I scanned several thousand of my parent's photos. I'd say a few dozen are of the places they were living. The ones that show recognizable places are pretty interesting to look at though.
FTA 9y ago
I can't remember the URL and I'm on mobile, but I recall a a site that did this for USSR photos. It was very interesting to see photos of Chernobyl pre-incident. Unfortunately trying to construct street level from this technique would be difficult as people would have to manually geolocate to an extent, which would generally grow the older the photos are. But I think sites like Mapillary and OpenStreetCam don't have a required freshness of photos, though I've found by accident Mapillary has a minimum at 1 epoch time.
cjsawyer 9y ago
I’d have people uploaded them now and have machine learning work out the stitching later. The sooner we collect data, the older the dataset we will have. People won’t have much incentive to upload things after they die.

zonotope 9y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260897

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

mttpgn 9y ago

First thing I noticed was the ReactJS favicon...

bdon 9y ago
Good catch, thanks. I use Safari so didn't notice... favicon is updated now.

dmix 9y ago

The South Bronx really was a war-zone. http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8265/-73.9080 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8265/-73.9080 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8107/-73.9180 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8107/-73.9180 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8188/-73.9217 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8188/-73.9217 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8229/-73.9167 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8229/-73.9167 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8102/-73.9194 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8102/-73.9194 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8152/-73.9165 http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8152/-73.9165 All of those rent-control incentivized arsons... empty lots with garbage everywhere... dogs running around with no owners visible. Edit: correction, while rent-control played a big role in Brooklyn's housing abandonment rate, South Bronx faced a variety of factors in addition to rent control: > For example, housing abandonment in the South Bronx, probably the most devastated area in the entire city, can be plausibly related to the economics of an obsolete housing stock. The area was one of the most densely populated in the country in the 1940s and 1950s, and the housing stock consists almost entirely of five- and six-story walkups. As population density decreased, fifth- and sixth-story walkup apartments became unrentable at prices sufficient for sound building maintenance, irrespective of rent controls. Arson eventually became the owners' only financially rewarding alternative. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100610/BLOGS01/306109998/a-history-lesson-on-rent-regulation-in-the-1970s http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100610/BLOGS01/306109...

e40 9y ago
One of the most stunning parts of the movie Koyaanisqatsi are the demolition of builds in the South Bronx (I'm pretty sure they're there, can someone confirm?). And, the scenes from the movie Wolfen look very similar to the above scenes.
- bdon 9y ago
  Those were in St. Louis, MO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe
  - e40 9y ago
    Hence the name of the song. (smacks side of head) Thanks.

kwoff 9y ago

I don't know much about NYC, but I've read "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987 novel; heard the movie sucked...). Anyone plot key points in that? (for example: the car scene of Sherman and Maria, the court house in the Bronx, the Park Avenue apartments). If not, whaddaya whaddaya?

apaprocki 9y ago

From having browsed through the tax lot photos in the municipal archives from prior generations, it would be fun to see a split view where you browse around both the 1940s and 1980s at the same time. If you browse around 80s Williamsburg photos it is not a place you would want to be. Now every one of those lots would be a minimum of $1M, with waterfront lots in the tens of millions. Pays to play the long game.

guelo 9y ago
In the long game we're all dead.
- volkl48 9y ago
  Not to mention that not everywhere comes back (in said lifetime at least). The same gamble that paid off in NYC or Boston likely didn't in Baltimore, Detroit, STL, etc. Playing the long game has given you zero or near zero returns for decades there.

sotojuan 9y ago

My building and the pharmacy near me are there and look the same!

martijn_himself 9y ago

How appropriate. I was just watching Simon and Garfunkel perform 'The Boxer' in Central Park, 1981 on YouTube.

subdane 9y ago

There's an AR project in here, I tell ya!

largote 9y ago

New York has really come a long way.

adamzerner 9y ago

I was expecting a street view like Google Maps. The name seems a bit misleading to me.

dogruck 9y ago
Not hating, but I was underwhelmed. There must be oodles of old NYC photos sitting in various old home photo albums out there. I hope some day they're all digitized and compiled into something like a VR experience. :-)

somberi 9y ago

As interesting as it is to see some rough areas, most of the areas have not changed much. I looked at the streets where I used to live / currently live - they largely look the same. Some of the shops are still there. Since someone mentioned popular culture references, one movie that I thought "got" the hyper nature of 80s NYC was "Crocodile Dundee". It is of course exaggerated, being a romantic comedy, but it got some parts of it very well.

VirtualAirwaves 9y ago

I miss the old early 80s Times Square! Nice and seedy. (I was born in Brooklyn in 1962)

Vladv26 9y ago

Nice project. I was wondering how the street's were back then in 80s and it is hard to find a photo foe every street. Nice job