As The Crow Flies

July 24, 2005 11:44 AM

Bird's Eye Views : Hand drawn panoramic maps of 44 Texas cities circa 19th century in high resolution. Aerial mapping minus airplanes and cameras.
posted by Orb (14 comments total)

Holy shit this is rad. I wish there were cities outside of Texas.
posted by cmonkey at 12:08 PM on July 24, 2005

if it aint got googlemaps it aint worth posting
posted by nervousfritz at 12:09 PM on July 24, 2005

Wow. This is so very, very good.
posted by blendor at 12:24 PM on July 24, 2005

This is terrific. Thanks, Orb.
posted by sellout at 12:27 PM on July 24, 2005

Wow. I live on the downtown square in Denton, Tx - a mid-size college town north of D/FW. I knew our building was old, but we had assumed it to have been built around 1910ish, when it was a doctor's office. There it is, though, in 1883 as a bank. Neat!

Great link!
posted by kaseijin at 12:38 PM on July 24, 2005

I guess this is how people spent their free time before the internets were invented.
posted by mcsweetie at 2:10 PM on July 24, 2005

Gorgeous. Does anyone have a lead on stuff like this outside of TX?
posted by Mid at 2:16 PM on July 24, 2005

The Library of Congress has a collection of them on line.
posted by Orb at 2:40 PM on July 24, 2005

Neat. It's Texas only because it's done by the Amon Carter Museum right here in Fort Worth, I guess.
posted by Doohickie at 4:24 PM on July 24, 2005

Any tricks to getting the non-Zoomified images? I was interested in tracing out where the Houston freeways were put down, but Zoomify has defeated me.
posted by rolypolyman at 4:47 PM on July 24, 2005

Very impressive. And I now take back everything I ever said about Abilene being small. It's huge, comparatively! Though it's good to know that the roads sucked even then...
posted by wallaby at 7:19 PM on July 24, 2005

Very nice. I can't wait to collect the whole place-mat set.
posted by furtive at 3:04 AM on July 25, 2005

Nice post.
posted by OmieWise at 7:21 AM on July 25, 2005

This is very cool.

I have the one of Phoenix that I bought years ago and still need to have framed.

I think I'll order one of the ones of New Orleans as soon as I have some disposable income.
posted by djeo at 3:47 PM on July 25, 2005