A website for exploring historical photographs of my city
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HN · launched Aug 12, 2026 · 35 upvotes (top 18%) · 0 views
Niche: digital history and reference archives · 150 launches, 6 in the last 7 days ▼ -57% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 150 launches in digital history and reference archives →
Could you build this?
Yes This is a web map viewer (built on MapLibre/Leaflet with PMTiles and historical raster tile sets like Sanborn maps) displaying georeferenced public historical imagery.
Discussion
17 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Pastvu (xUSSR historical photos), OpenSFHistory (San Francisco), Hillview.cz (Czech city-focused), Panoramax (federated geocommuns), OldMapsOnline (georeferenced maps)
Concerns raised: Navigation and user experience confusing for new users, Cognitive overload/overwhelming interface, Date filtering not intuitive enough, No responsive image sizing (srcset), Map below the fold requires scrolling
Feature requests: Timeline view to filter and scroll through years, Side-by-side comparison of same location across different time periods, Map at top of homepage with preview of photos below, Better date range filtering on map, Global expansion beyond US localities
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 357 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #56 of 358 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 287 days after the earliest competitor.
- I built a site that shows every world event you lived through · hn · 2026-04-10 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- city-visualizer · github · 2026-10-16 · 33 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- bikemap.nyc · hn · 2026-01-07 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- A walkable 3D art history museum built from Wikipedia · hn · 2026-10-07 · 174 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Mapibara · hn · 2025-12-11 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Browsing forgotten digicam photos from early Flickr (2000–2012) · hn · 2026-04-15 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- art-history-museum · github · 2026-10-05 · 39 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- gitropolis · github · 2026-10-20 · 23 upvotes · similarity 0.48
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