Tag Archives: historical images

Historic DC Maps

In the same vein as UCLA’s Hypercities maps I’ve discussed previously, I recently ran across some more historical maps from Shannon over at We Love DC.  The maps themselves are ok, not nearly as detailed or interesting as the Hypercities maps, taking the historic maps and re-projecting them onto an interactive Google maps interface.

More interesting to me, however, is an older post of Shannon’s that directs you to David Rumsey’s historical map archive, as well as a world-wide index – which includes (unlike the Hypercities site) two DC maps – from 1851 and 1861.

The index page shows you the wide variety of locations covered:

DC_Hist_6

The interface is similar to the hypercities one, allowing you to toggle on a historical map that has been manipulated to match the projection of the underlying Google interface.  This allows you to navigate around the environment.

First, the base layer, a current aerial of DC:

DC_Hist_1

Here’s the 1851 map of DC:

DC_Hist_5

And the 1861 map:

DC_Hist_2

You can adjust the opacity to directly compare the current conditions to the map – some interesting details concern the shoreline of the Anacostia, the existence of Hains Point, as well as the evolution of the city’s built environment:

DC_Hist_3

The detail in the 1861 map is fantastic.  Extremely detailed, right down to the figure ground of individual buildings – as well as demonstrating how much of L’Enfant’s plan had been built out on the eve of the Civil War.

DC_Hist_4

On the edges of the L’Enfant city, the map shows how historic roads have shaped the current city, such as Columbia Road meeting Connecticut:

DC_Hist_7

Also, the property boundaries outside of the L’Enfant plan influenced the street patterns of later developments.  Note how the slightly off-kilter grid of LeDroit Park corresponds to the landholdings of one C. Miller:

DC_Hist_8

Very cool stuff.

Plenty of Parking

DCist takes note of a great photo of the Mt. Vernon Square area from 1992, looking south towards the Portrait Gallery and what’s now the Verizon Center:

It’s amazing to realize how much the area has changed over the past 15-20 years.  Looking back at the historical images available from Google Earth, you can piece together the evolution of the area over the years.  Google Earth’s imagery isn’t universally available over time, so there are some rather big gaps between some aerial sets.

North is to the left in all the images.

1949:

MVS-1949

Note the fine grain of the urban fabric, almost all of the buildings occupy narrow lots with zero setback from the property line – and there are virtually no vacant lots.  You can see the beginnings of site clearance at the top if the image for the enormous Government Accountability Office building.  That structure would be dedicated in 1951.

1988:

MVS-1988

In 1988, things have changed a great deal.  Obviously, lots of surface parking lots here.  Though the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro station opened in 1976 with the first operable segment of the Red line, the North-South connection along the Green-Yellow lines wasn’t yet open when this picture was taken.  The Mount Vernon Sq, Shaw-Howard, and U St stations all opened in 1991, just prior to the taking of the opening photograph in this post.

1999:

MVS-1999

In 1999, the (now) Verizon Center has been open for business for about a year and a half.  Site preparation is well underway for the new convention center, but there are still some significant parcels in key downtown locations occupied with vacant lots or surface parking.

2004:

MVS-2004

Gallery Place is taking shape, the new convention center is done, and other vacant lots fill in.  Still some significant vacant lots to the North of Mass Ave.

2009:

MVS-2009

The old convention center has been removed, just about all of the once vacant lots in old downtown (i.e. the right side of this image) are filled in, and stuff to the north of Mass Ave is beginning to see some real development. There’s a little error in image stitching between L and M streets, with the aerials to the right taking a slightly more oblique angle, showing the heights of the buildings in Old Downtown.

Watching this section of DC devolve and then redevelop shows some clear trends.  The newer buildings are all much bigger than their predecessors – both in terms of heights and footprint.  The fine-grained urban fabric of the 1949 image is largely gone from the downtown portions of the images, aside from a few stretches where the original facades have been retained behind newer developments or a few blocks in Chinatown, where the finer grained structures remain.

The interesting thing to note is how much of Downtown DC turned first to surface parking before redeveloping back into urban forms.  This intermediate, destructive step prevents preserving that kind of fine grained urbanism.  Nevertheless, the redevelopment of the area is a rousing success, showing the versatility of the traditional city grid – particularly when reinforced with urban rail transit.

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington