by Anne Petersen
SBTHP recently joined History Pin, a nonprofit, web-based organization that enjoys a strong partnership with Google. Users on History Pin can upload historic photos to the site, “pin” them to Google Maps, shares stories, and date the photos on a site-wide timeline. History Pin developers hope their site will be used world-wide to share historic photos, creating a huge community of users and a visual history of the world since the invention of photography—an ambitious vision!
Anyone can use History Pin, and it’s free. You can find the website here. Just go to the map and enter the zip code of a place you are interested in, and look for the pins to click on. Careful, this can be quite addicting! You’ll see there’s lots of information connected with every photo, including captions and comments uploaded by users, and you can even sort through all the photos in one area from a certain date.
One of the strongest features of History Pin is its interface with Google Maps’ Street View. If there is a little yellow figure attached to the photo info., then it is available on Street View. When you open an image in street view mode, you can use a toggle bar to change the view between the historic photo and the contemporary street view. The possibilities for History Pin are limitless for a preservation organization like SBTHP. It’s a great tool for raising awareness about our historic properties, and by taking advantage of their free cell phone app (just search History Pin in ITunes Store or Google Play to find it), we might even try incorporating pins in our walking tours!
Can you guess where this is located? Jump onto History Pin and find it on Google Maps to see if you are right! From the collections of the Presidio Research Center.
We’ve uploaded three historic photos of the Santa Barbara Presidio neighborhood from our collections at the Presidio Research Center, just to get started. You can see them here. All are available on Street View, so have fun toggling between now and then!
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