The last decade in Philadelphia has been one of development so rapid it’s actually somewhat disorienting sometimes. Things that you thought were there, things that you knew once to be in a specific place, are suddenly now other things with alarming regularity. Thank God, then, for Google Street View’s time machine function, which was initially rolled out a while ago but now seems to be well and truly installed in Philadelphia. If nothing else, it can help prove that you’re not insane. 

Go ahead and pop in your favorite recently disrupted address or intersection, view it in Street View, then tap the little clock on the upper left, and voila! You’ll get to see that ghastly new thing when it was just a tax-abated twinkle in some developer’s eye. Certain addresses, and frankly most of Fishtown, will tell this tale quite amazingly, but for reference above, here’s the corner of 3rd and Chestnut morphing from the old Visitors’ Center to its new spot as the Museum Of The American Revolution (which, by the way, always feels to this writer like the most MAGA-friendly museum in town, most likely without meaning to, but a MAGA vibe is a MAGA vibe, and there it is). At any rate, this feature seems to want to tell a story. Can’t help but wonder how it ends.