Victorians Pioneered Virtual Property Tours

⊲ IanVisits ⊳ Researchers have revealed that Brooks and Green, a Victorian estate agency on Old Bond Street, used cosmorama displays to show wealthy buyers immersive images of country estates during the 1840s and 1850s. Customers viewed specially commissioned illustrations through convex lenses and controlled lighting, creating an illusion of depth and offering a Victorian version of the virtual property tour. Advertisements claimed several hundred estate views were available, revealing how property marketing was adopting immersive visual techniques more than 150 years before online listings and digital walk-throughs. The study, part of the CURIOSITAS project with Lisbon’s Universidade Lusófona, catalogued over 650 cosmoramas across Portugal, Spain and the UK.
⊲ Brooks and Green’s aerial-perspective views from 1838 suggest today’s drone photography and 3D property tours are simply modern tools solving a problem estate agents already faced. ⊳
⊲ Image – William Carpenter, The Boy’s own book: a complete Encyclopedia … (London: D. Bogue, 1849), 429. ⊳
www.simulation.news