In the same vein as UCLA’s Hypercities maps I’ve discussed previously, I recently ran across some more historical maps from Shannon over at We Love DC.  The maps themselves are ok, not nearly as detailed or interesting as the Hypercities maps, taking the historic maps and re-projecting them onto an interactive Google maps interface.

More interesting to me, however, is an older post of Shannon’s that directs you to David Rumsey’s historical map archive, as well as a world-wide index – which includes (unlike the Hypercities site) two DC maps – from 1851 and 1861.

The index page shows you the wide variety of locations covered:

The interface is similar to the hypercities one, allowing you to toggle on a historical map that has been manipulated to match the projection of the underlying Google interface.  This allows you to navigate around the environment.

First, the base layer, a current aerial of DC:

Here’s the 1851 map of DC:

And the 1861 map:

You can adjust the opacity to directly compare the current conditions to the map – some interesting details concern the shoreline of the Anacostia, the existence of Hains Point, as well as the evolution of the city’s built environment:

The detail in the 1861 map is fantastic.  Extremely detailed, right down to the figure ground of individual buildings – as well as demonstrating how much of L’Enfant’s plan had been built out on the eve of the Civil War.

On the edges of the L’Enfant city, the map shows how historic roads have shaped the current city, such as Columbia Road meeting Connecticut:

Also, the property boundaries outside of the L’Enfant plan influenced the street patterns of later developments.  Note how the slightly off-kilter grid of LeDroit Park corresponds to the landholdings of one C. Miller:

Very cool stuff.