The New York Public Library Wants You to Build a Time Machine

New York City was a much different place 200 years ago.

Industrial goods from the city proper were expanding west for the first time through the Great Lakes. A surge of immigrants from across Europe were passing through the Ellis Island checkpoint en masse. And urban planners, under guidance of the new Commissioner's Plan of 1811, were just starting to organize a grid-based pattern of streets north of Houston Street.

When you open Google Maps to show Manhattan today, you see the basics: Central Park, Broadway, Harlem, etc. You can even see Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company in Times Square, if you zoom in far enough Read more...

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The New York Public Library Wants You to Build a Time Machine