Google Street View..

[walker]

Veloise, on 27 October 2011 - 11:15 AM, said:

Gonna make me work, eh? Tell me the orientation on the old Evening News building and I'll reposition it. And help with OCH location and orientation, I'll put that one in too.

ETA: just found a flag which leads to sending a dispute e-mail to the Grand Poo-Bah of the site.

Need to find the old J.W. York factory image. I am familiar with its location.

Your Press building alignment is spot on now. Your old city hall might be a problem. It looks like the postcard shot was from the top of the old post office/federal buiding / art museum. The Google car didn't get up there. Here is the closest orientation I could get, but you being a planner and all you may be able to do better:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ionia+at+lyon&hl=en&ll=42.966661,-85.667975&spn=0.000031,0.02105&sll=42.967263,-85.668932&layer=c&cbp=13,293.18,,0,-21.14&cbll=42.967266,-85.66843&hnear=Ionia+Ave+NW+%26+Lyon+St+NW,+Grand+Rapids,+Kent,+Michigan+49503&t=m&z=16&vpsrc=0&panoid=2mNPMwKH5dOfPg2VAcONgw

Although I remember seeing one someplace, I can't find an image of the York Band Instrument factory either. It was at the southeast corner of Crofton and Division, a multi-story factory building with the longest side facing along Division, red brick with good size windows as best as I remember. Pretty typical of empty early twentieth century factories around town. If it had been closer to downtown it would probably be apartments now instead of a vacant lot.

[walker]

This new version of urbanplanet is terrible. Half the time it loses my post or it messes it up like the above. It is certainly enough to discourage someone from posting.

I can usually make my own mistakes without any help from the software.

[Veloise]

Your Press building alignment is spot on now. Your old city hall might be a problem. It looks like the postcard shot was from the top of the old post office/federal buiding / art museum. The Google car didn't get up there. Here is the closest orientation I could get, but you being a planner and all you may be able to do better:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ionia+at+lyon&hl=en&ll=42.966661,-85.667975&spn=0.000031,0.02105&sll=42.967263,-85.668932&layer=c&cbp=13,293.18,,0,-21.14&cbll=42.967266,-85.66843&hnear=Ionia+Ave+NW+%26+Lyon+St+NW,+Grand+Rapids,+Kent,+Michigan+49503&t=m&z=16&vpsrc=0&panoid=2mNPMwKH5dOfPg2VAcONgw

That link pulls up the One Girls Treasure building.

I found a shot-through-the-Calder Old City Hall image (several steps forward from the big swing-Olds Plaza orientation) on the library's website, and added that. Maybe we need the Google remote toy helicopter.

whatwasthere uses only Streetview. If it would add a Bing option, I could fly to the correct place.

Although I remember seeing one someplace, I can't find an image of the York Band Instrument factory either. It was at the southeast corner of Crofton and Division, a multi-story factory building with the longest side facing along Division, red brick with good size windows as best as I remember. Pretty typical of empty early twentieth century factories around town. If it had been closer to downtown it would probably be apartments now instead of a vacant lot.

Found my images.

And I shot some before the building was disappeared.

[Gorath]

Bing now has street view.  However coverage in GR is very small.  Most of downtown is missed.

 

 

 

The good news however is that Bing street view is more recent then Google's, and the image quality is slightly better looking.

 

Bing Image:

 

Google Street view:

[Veloise]

Good find! Looks like the Streetside drive took place last July, going by construction in a certain location being completed.

 

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=42.969340~-85.670095&lvl=16&dir=0&sty=x~lat~42.96934~lon~-85.670095~alt~159.7818~z~30~h~267.8~p~8.1~cz~0.66~pid~5082&app=5082&FORM=LMLTCC

 

(no, not this location)

[Gorath]

This is interesting.  A time lapse of the last 28 years of satellite images.

 

http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/v=42.9633599,-85.66808630000003,10.531550649279048

[Gorath]

Google has updated their Street View images.  They are now at a higher resolution.

 

 

 

Not sure when they were taken. These links may provide some clues;

Seidman Center

Division & Cherry

Steam Pig

 

[Edit: Read the copyright in the lower left corner of the image. Answer: August 2011]

[Edit 2: Some places are coming up with June 2011 or July 2011.  New answer: Summer 2011. If you want to be nit-picky late spring / summer 2011. ]

 

They appear to be older images then what Bing has now, but the Google images are much higher quality.  Some areas in GR on Google Maps still have the much older 2007 Google street view.