Somerville in 1852

[wallacestreet.livejournal.com]

While looking for something completely different, I came across this map of Somerville 150 years ago. Very interesting to see, for example, that the high school is still in the same place. Anyone know of other historical maps on line?

Comments

[ron_newman]

http://www.CommunityHeritageMaps.com and http://www.WardMaps.com are good places to look for such maps. (I may come back later to post more specific URLs.)

[avjudge]

The CommunityHeritageMaps site maps of Somerville look like the ones I saw at the Somerville Library - I didn't actually look at the 1884 map, since it was getting late & our street didn't change (much) between 1874 and 1900 (I did just notice one house was added between 1884 & 1900), so I don't know if it's "colorized" like the one on line.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

http://historical.maptech.com has old topo maps of all of New England. (this is what became of the old UNH collection, for those who became familiar with the collection when it was hosted at docs.unh.edu. I believe you can still access it there.)

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

Cool. The flash viewer app is kind of annoying, though. There doesn't seem to be a download link, and given the date, this is clearly in the public domain. So, I reconstructed the full image from the tiles -- you can download it from http://mattdm.org/random-data/somerville-1852.jpg (http://mattdm.org/random-data/somerville-1852.jpg).

Beware, though -- it's 15MB and 10344×6912 pixels (which would be 70 megapixels in digital camera terms).

[ron_newman]

The railroad branch to Harvard lasted only about five years. The curve of current Museum Street exactly follows the former railroad right-of-way.

[xxv.livejournal.com]

hot, thanks!

[xxv.livejournal.com]

I took your image and uploaded it to http://labs.metacarta.com/rectifier/rectify/316

Now you can look at it compared to a modern map :-)

It's amazing how much landfill has occurred. I had trouble finding ground control points when attempting to use natural landmarks.

[avjudge]

If you have a Somerville library card, you can access the Digital Sanborn Maps of MA - for Somerville they date from 1900 and 1933. Go here - http://www.mln.lib.ma.us/scripts/somerville.plx - and put in your card number.

I found these last Halloween, when we spent several hours in the library. The central library also has printed maps from 1874 and 1884 - like the Sanborn maps they show every lot line, every building, including the height and whether it's a house (D for domicile) or outbuilding. The older maps also give the owner. I found my development - just over a dozen little 2-story Mansards - was completed on the 1874 map, but my house was still owned by the developer (Horace Partridge, jeweler, printer, and land developer according to the 1874 city directory, also in the library) He certainly wouldn't have been living in such a small house so I assume it just hadn't sold yet, though the others had. Jenny Lind Ave. looked exactly the same on the 1900 map (except extended from Medford on up to Broadway), but by the 1933 map its name had been changed to Glenwood Rd, all the "in-between" vacant lots had been split in half and built on, and my house's addition had been built - the whole thing was 2 stories instead of 2 in front and 1 in back. You can find out a lot from a little research!