Google sets up street view tours of historic locations

If you’ve ever wanted to visit New York City, but haven’t had the time or money to get there, Google is offering a pretty cool solution: You can take virtual tours of three of the city’s most historic landmarks right from your desktop.

The locations include Central Park, neighborhoods devastated by Hurricane Sandy, and the 9/11 Memorial Park.

For Central Park, Google teamed up with the Central Park Conservancy and sent out its Street View crew Trekker to travel throughout the park, recording every walking trail and path inside the parks itself, even going down paths most visitors don’t use. 

Google Street View team member takes the recording technology along one of Central Park’s bike paths.

Video of the Street View journey through Central Park below:

The tour of neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Sandy was a bit more of an arduous task. In order to compile the most amount of data, Google partnered with Historypin on a community photo and video album of areas affected by the storm. 

Homepage for the Google / Historypin photo and video album of neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Sandy.

When going through the album, users are able to not only explore various neighborhoods, but contribute old and new images of the places too.

For the 9/11 Memorial, Google created a touching tribute to the World Trade Center, which includes jaw-dropping views of both the north and south pools. Users checking out the area via Street View can actually get close enough to the Memorial to see and read victims’ names that are engraved along both pools. 

A close-up view of the 9/11 Memorial via Google Street View.

Story via: google-latlong.blogspot.com