Google Launches LA Street View, but It's a Bit of a Letdown
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — As noted in the Times this morning, Google's now rolled out its Street View imagery for Los Angeles, including Downtown. The shots are taken by Immersive Media, and are far less high-resolution than Google's own work in Mountain View, CA. The article gets into all the typical overblown fears about privacy, but doesn't address something far more important: this imagery is old.
The Hanover tower at 717 W. Olympic, now topped out, is shown as a hole in the ground. The Spring street contraflow lane, which went out of service June 18, 2006, is still there.
In fact, referencing posts here on blogdowntown against views on the street, I can pretty confidently say that most of the Downtown imagery was shot in the second half of January, 2006. It's likely that the shots were taken over the course of a few days or a week, but that's the basic timeline.
First, on Wilshire we can see set dressing for Fast and the Furious 3, which I posted about on January 20, 2006. On the other side of Downtown it's clear that the shots were taken after January 23rd, when there was a fire at the old Produce Market (visible fire damage). A single view, likely picked up later, shows construction at the Roosevelt, while other views don't include the scaffolding that went up in the last week of January.
Who knew that blogdowntown could be used for dating imagery?
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meekorouse on August 07, 2007, at 03:14PM – #1
wow! that is kind of cool.. if you look at Packard Lofts they have a "now leasing sign" even back then and there's some guy ripping up the ground right next to what would be the entrance to the lobby. grin
I wonder where the leasing office was back then? That's a much better view than the aerial parking lot demo that Google earth gives, but then anything looks better than that I guess. =)
Urban Bruin on August 07, 2007, at 04:01PM – #2
Took a look and the images for L.A. are not that clear. From the LA Times you'd think google photos had x-ray vision.
Osc on August 09, 2007, at 01:38AM – #3
Some of the images are horrible. Like this one.
Steve on August 09, 2007, at 10:11AM – #4
Eric:
Metropolis Books is in the photos for Main Street. We opened on December 1, 2006. The banner we got from VEDC wasn't up at the time the pictures were taken. It went up at our Grand Opening on December 15th. So the pictures were taken sometime in that 2 week window in the first half of December, 2006.
Eric Richardson (@blogdowntown) on August 09, 2007, at 11:36AM – #5
Steve: It does look like there are some random newer pickup shots. There may have been missed streets in the existing data.