The Borough of West Chester is having a grand ol’ time getting its digital data together and the fun is rubbing off. Earlier this month the Borough of West Chester introduced a new “Time Warp” map tool that compiles aerial imagery of the Borough from 1935 through 2020.
Want to see an aerial view of your street when the first can of beer and, fitting for this area, parking meter hit the market? Select your year of interest, in this case, 1935, and zoom in. I learned that in the late 1930s the Everhart Park area was almost rural with some development on the northern side with only a handful of houses on the park’s southern border – ours being one of them.
Remember these are old maps so, quality in some cases is iffy and know the historic maps are overlaid onto current Google data. Therefore, if you zoom too far out you will begin to see 2022 East Bradford and West Goshen seep in along the edges. Also, because of the overlay, the markings on the maps are not historic. The 1935 map, for example, shows John O. Green Park, Bayard Rustin Park, and Kathy McBrantie Park where they exist today – none were there at the time.
Originally published, Jan. 27, 2023
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