Decorative drawing: a three-storey commercial block with shopfronts below and windows above. Not a photograph of this place.

What your town looked like a century ago

Old maps, photographs and building records of American towns, gathered from public archives with a link to every original.

Try a town or hamlet, a full street address, a National Register property, a person named in a document, or a business in the old atlases. Location is used only if you press the target button.

State County Place

The archive is growing: 32 states published so far, with more on the way. Tell us which state or county you want first and we will build toward it.

Start here

Block Before is a source-linked local history archive. Begin with a place you know, then move from its map to the records connected to that ground.

Search a town, street address, property, or name. Place-name search stays in your browser.
Open a map or record. Every source label leads back to the archive that holds the original.
Keep useful pages. Save a page or copy a citation from its research tools.

What is available now

Archive records: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming. Historic topographic map search: nationwide. Other record types are added county by county, so a map may be available where a photo, nomination, or local narrative is not.

Browse the archive

2,224 counties