What was there? Glad you asked.

Now and then: Spring Street, looking north from Marietta Street

If browsing Atlanta Time Machine is your idea of a good time, prepare to burn a few hours at WhatWasThere.

Have you ever thought about what the building that houses the shelter at Peachtree and Pine used to be, or tried to imagine what Five Points looked like when it really was the center of the city? Do you know what used to be on the empty lot at the northeast corner of North Avenue and Argonne? Now you can very nearly go back in time to see.

WhatWasThere imposes historical photographs onto Google Maps street view images, showing what altered or long-demolished buildings would look like if they were neatly dropped right back into their former locations. Atlanta National Bank, for example, can be re-installed on the corner of Peachtree and Alabama Streets. The creators’ goal is no less ambitious than to use Google Maps and contributed photos to “build a history of the world.”

Each mapped location includes information about the archive image and the transparency can be adjusted to make either the older or newer buildings disappear.

H/T to The Atlantic Cities

Tags: atlanta time machine, history, photographs, the atlantic cities, what was there