ABSTRACT
The 1939-1941 New York City Tax Survey,7 meanwhile, consisted of 35mm photographs that systematically documented the façade of every building on every street in New York City. Produced specically for government ocials, the images were used by the New York City Department of Estimates to recover tax revenue that had been lost to undervalued or unregistered buildings that had evaded collectors. This survey of façades, taken from the street with signposts showing coordinates so that they could be cross-referenced, was repeated between 1983 and 1988. Interestingly, Google recently attempted to win a contract to digitize this archive, and had plans to link the photographs to its geospatial services.8
