Google Maps Lets You ‘Time-Travel’ To Look At Your House In The Past

Wish you could return to simpler days, when people’s purse strings didn’t depend on the fluctuating cryptocurrency market and Roe v Wade wasn’t abolished? Unfortunately, we’re overselling things here; while you can’t reverse realities, you can, at least, step back and revel at what your neighborhood looked like a decade ago.

As discovered by Apartment Therapy, Google kicked off Street View’s 15th anniversary this year by inviting users to “travel back in time” by exploring historical imagery of places, including landmarks and smaller streets.

The feature works kind of like the Internet Archive, but with geography and architecture.

Google demonstrates the tool with the Vessel in New York City, a tourist attraction in Hudson Yards that first broke ground in 2017. The building opened in 2019, but it has since been shuttered a couple of times and remains closed indefinitely because of a number of tragic incidents. Understandably, it has seen several changes throughout its lifetime.

Image via Google

To access the feature, simply drag the tiny yellow person on Google Maps and drop it on the location of interest. With Street View now open, you can tap the clock icon on the top left, where you’ll be able to click through different intervals.

Google Maps’ time machine is limited to the past 15 years, which was when Street View first launched. It also doesn’t work for every place—just those that have been captured by Street View cameras.

[via Apartment Therapy and Travel + Leisure, images via various sources]