Is it possible to see your childhood neighborhood as it used to be?

Interesting! When I first read the title of your thread, I thought this was a more figurative “Can you ever really go home?” kind of question.
I’ve used Google Earth to check out my parents’ home in Florida, where I grew up, but I have never checked out my childhood home in another state. I might do that some day. I imagine I’d be surprised at how small the neighborhood was; walking from my house to school seemed like a monstrous trek at the time!

My neighborhood from when I was 7 and 8 in San Francisco looks pretty much the same. But there are all kinds of preservation laws in place.

The house where we lived when I was in 3rd and 4th grade, in Harrison NY, is also the same except for the fence we put in (my dad had us all helping) was taken down.

But it’s all in color now! Back then the world was in black and white!

My childhood neighborhood is now under water – literally. The farm that I grew up on is a reservoir.

@zenvelo
An aerial photo company had located the areas that I needed and had two choices of photos to view at 300 dpi . They also had for $32.00 per picture aerial views at 1200 dpi which show the houses much clearer , and shows how it looked then!
@janbb
You can still get pictures of your neighborhood as it was then Before it was under water.

How interesting! No, I didn’t.

I’ll have to look into that. I was just driving through my childhood neighborhood earlier today and was commenting to my fiance how depressing it was. There are just a ton of houses everywhere now. It used to be all fields and woods that I would run around and play in and its all bloody houses – _ -

This would be really interesting for me because our woods have grown up and the swamps have dried up significantly. The entire 10 acres used to be perfectly manicured, with large gardens and even a baseball diamond of sorts. Over the last 20 years or so, though, it’s gotten kind of wild, and the difference in aerial pictures would be really interesting.

I looked up my house when I was a child. I didn’t recognize anything about where it was, I got a few different views and finally realized the house was no longer there. I had been leveled and made into a parking lot for the local university (which was only a college when I lived there.) No more pear tree; no more screened porch; no more basement where the coal came down the chute. Only fond memories…

My favorite childhood house is completely gone, as is every other house on the block. It is now a block full of condos.

The 100 year old house I rented in Santa Barbara is still there and looks better than ever.

I grew up in a couple places, my parents still live where I was raised from ages 9–18 and I have been back to visit several times.

I recently looked up visuals, maps, and photos of where I lived before that and some of it s very much how I remembered. I think if I saw it in real life it would all seem smaller and closer together than what is in my memory, that happens to me often when I go back to a childhood place. I lived in a building in that town, the building is still there. It actualy is one of two 6 floor buildings side by side.

A woman I knew years ago went back to Germany a few years after the wall came down. Her family left Germany before the whole Nazi thing went into full swing. They fled to Chile, she was a young girl, about 4 or 5. In her 20’s she came to America and lived here permanently. Anyway, the wall comes down and she goes to East Germany to see her childhood home and the country. While standing in front of her house a neighbor, an elderly man, walks up and strikes up a conversation. she explanes she used to live there and he says to her, “you are little Lisa aren’t you?” All in German of course. He remembered her. I guess since she was Jewish maybe it made a lasting impression? Or, that they up and left in a hurry? Not sure.

I saw the roof and some of the house on google earth .