The University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab has digitized and made available online the entire
Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. By viewing the maps on top of contemporary images, you get a unique picture of progress.
Check out Philadelphia.
The old paper maps have been geo-rectified so that they can be viewed atop digital maps. The atlas contains several series of maps across the years, which have now been animated. In one, you can watch the center of the U.S. population migrate from 1790 to 1930 (in the 1920s, the center of America's urban population was located in western Ohio).
As you might imagine, the newly accessible collection is full of arcane trivia about American exports in the 1790s, but also a wealth of knowledge about the early growth of U.S. cities, and what their first planners had in mind for them. One particularly delightful chapter is devoted to the "plans of cities" – all of them, of necessity, from the East Coast – dating back to as early as 1775.
Original source: The Atlantic Cities
Read the complete story
here.