“Warping” through Queens history with the NYPL Map Warper tool

insurance maps of the borough of queens, vol 2, 1915

Insurance Maps of the Borough of Queens, City of New York, Volume Two, published in 1915 and digitally reproduced on the NYPL Map Warper according to a CC0 1.0 license.

Authored by Maddy Vericker

The NYPL Map Warper is a collection of New York-area maps and atlases that have been digitized and published online under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication license.[1] The coolest thing about the Map Warper tool is that it is also a crowdsourcing project that relies on volunteers to pin old maps to modern satellite maps, a process called georectification.[2]  Exploring the maps that populate the website reveals much about the history of a city that is constantly evolving, and in researching the Sanborn Map Co.’s Insurance Maps of the Borough of Queens, City of New York, Volume Two,[3] these changes are even more apparent. Continue reading