Mainstreet 360º Project

Uniting Through History is excited to partner with the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) to literally bring Buxton, Iowa to life via the Mainstreet 360º project! Mainstreet 360º, which is currently under development, is an interactive online application within Fortepan Iowa that will allow a user to move virtually through 360º imagery (similar to Google Street View) and see historical Fortepan Iowa photos matched to the very place and perspective from which the original photographer captured the photograph.

“Focusing on visualizing the town of Buxton, Iowa for our prototype, we will identify the geolocations of hundreds of archival Buxton photographs and ‘float’ the historical photos on the 360º imagery captured by the University of Northern Iowa’s GeoInformatics Training Research Education and Extension (GeoTREE) Center.”

Bettina Fabos, Ph.D., Professor, Visual Communication and Interactive Digital Studies, University of Northern Iowa

The idea is to present an experience that is as user-friendly as Google Street View but with added functionality to see historic images overlaid on the more recent virtual 360º imagery.

In upcoming weeks, we’ll be adding more exciting information about this project. Be sure to sign-up for our newsletter so you’ll get the latest news!