Seeing Back in Time with Google Street View

Ever wondered what a location looked like a year, or even 5 years ago? Google Street View can help you out. Let me show you how it works.

Find Your Address

My firm, Lowenthal & Abrams, is located at 555 E. City Avenue in Bala Cynwyd. I’ll use that as the address to search. When I search I can access the Street View picture of our building. You can see the 555 over on the building in the middle near the bridge. There is a flag on top of it.

If you look in the upper left corner, you will see the address and a little clock. Click on the clock and you will see date options. It looks like this.

Each dot on the slider represents a date. There may be several pictures for a year, a picture or a year or it may skip years. It just depends on how often Google’s car drives by. If Google has never driven by, well, then you are out of luck.  Anyway, when I go back in time, by choosing 2007, I can see a full-sized image of the first entry Google Street View has for our location. It looks similar, but not exactly the same.

Pretty neat, huh?