Fun With Cartography
I found a map of Minneapolis from a 1923 edition of the Gazeteer of Cities and Towns of the World on eBay recently, and I thought it would be interesting to see what our city and neighborhood looked like back when the house was new.
To my disappointment, it looks like the map information was probably a couple years old in the 1923 edition of the Gazeteer because our neighborhood appears as open, undeveloped space.
Today, of course, a map of the neighborhood is only a Google or Mapquest search away. We even have the option to see a satellite image overlay of the maps Google produces. My only disappointment with these satellite maps is that they don’t have enough resolution to drill down to an individual house.
Fortunately, our own Hennepin County has great aerial photos available through the property search area of the county website. Sure, the photos are a couple years old now, but compared to Google Earth, the resolution is fantastic. In the photo below, our house is the one with the green roof:
The photo is from 2004, so those are the previous owners’ cars alongside the house and there is some landscaping missing from the front yard. Nevertheless, this is an awfully cool feature. I found myself entering the addresses of other friends in town, just to see some more of the Sim City-view of Minneapolis. Check it out for yourself– but don’t look at your friends’ purchase price and property taxes, you curious little monkey!
4 Responses to “Fun With Cartography”
If your are a curious little monkey, you might also want to try. . .
http://www.zillow.com/
By Ron on Oct 28, 2006
Lol…one day I got bored and looked up all of my neighbor’s house sale prices & values. Homeowner research, I call it
I did a search of the recent photos and got a little creeped out when I saw my house & my car in the “shot from the sky”……..it suddenly felt a little Big Brother-ish. A while back I ran into the old plat photes of my neighborhhod a while back and it was interesting to see the little shotgun houses that were on some of the lots before the 1920’s houses.
By stuccohouse on Oct 28, 2006
That was fun. I got to see a picture of my parents old house before it was torn down. The info for the address is under the new owners name - wow!! Their new house cost a lot more than the old house.
And they pay the taxes to make up for it too!!!
By Julie on Oct 28, 2006
My goodness, we are a curious bunch! Okay, I admit I snooped around a bit, too, but for educational purposes only. I’m not a busybody.
Say, did you hear about so-and-so up the block…
By Josh on Oct 30, 2006