urban center never appear the same for more than a few years in a row . Landmarks disappear , high-flown trains give way to streetcars and subways , and old industrial site get rehabbed , to name a few common changes . Over the past one C , a fair amount has changed in New York City , as evidenced by a new program program that compares the modern metropolis to its 1924 past .

Urbanist and data visual image partizan Chris Whong createdUrban Scratch Off , a simple site with two layer of maps — one from 1924 and one from today — that allows users to erase one layer to reveal the imagery beneath . While much of the city ’s across-the-board design front quite similar in social structure to its 1924 incarnation , some substructure projection have made big impacts .

Whong ’s original construct was to visualise the shock the Brooklyn - Queens Expressway had on the communities in its course , and the level of demolition that pass to make fashion for the main road . But once you bug out scratching off part of the city to discover the historical urban framework , it ’s hard to stop at just the path of one highway . So he made it into a city - wide visual of urban development over 90 age .

Screenshot via Urban Scratch Off

Since 1924 , waterfront have changed ( Battery Park City , a landfill web site in business district Manhattan , was nail in 1976 ) , sports stadium have moved ( the current Yankee Stadium is a block compass north of the original , and the original home plate of the Brooklyn Dodgers is now anapartment building ) , and major airports have been erected ( JFK open as New York International Airport in 1948 ) . Just get out your mouse over a localization to see what it looked like before versus what it looks like now .

Whong hopes to tote up points of involvement in the future , because without a lookup function , it ’s a minuscule hard to find specific places unless you ’re exceedingly conversant with the geography . represent with it for yourselfhere . It ’s like a virtual lottery scratcher , except you do n’t recede any money .

[ h / t : CityLab ]