Friday, July 9, 2021

Using Google Maps To Search For Houses

 Using Google Maps To Search For Houses

A tool to use in researching houses in your town is Google Maps.  It does not go back in time very far, but is still useful. In Delmar, Houses are destroyed by fire or torn down at the rate of about 3 to 5 percent a year, so perhaps if you did not take a photo of the family home before it was destroyed you may have one more chance. 

You may have seen the Google Vehicle in Delmar going up and down streets taking their photographs.  The most current photo is the one you see in Google streetscapes.  However for Delmar the previous photographs are archived and go back to 2008. 

To use this tool go to Google Maps,   in the search block type in “1 East State Street Delmar Delaware”, this will bring a pop up window which will include a streetscape photograph and in the background will be a map of Delmar.  In the lower right corner will be an icon of an orange man that Google calls Pegman.  Drag Pegman to the location on the map that you want to look at.  For demonstration purposes drag him to the Delmar Police department.  This will show a current photograph of the Delmar Police Department. You can move around the police department and the streets on that block by following the arrows on the screen.  In the upper left hand corner of the photo will be a popup menu.  On that menu is an icon of a clock.  Click on this clock. Another popup video will appear with a timeline going back to 2008. Drag the timeline back to 2008.  Click on the plus sign to enlarge the video and the same location you had been looking at will become the image of what was there in 2008.  In this case it happens to be the “old” town hall. 

After you have maneuver around town and found the image you want you can use the Snipping tool found in the Windows Accessories package and outline the image and save it to your computer.

Because of cookies and other computer crap that makes each computer a little different you may have to play with these instructions on your computer to get them to work.  

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