For just one frame of Google’s Street View for Charleston Road in Mountain View, we are given a completely unprecedented and unique glimpse inside the operation, as the camera is switched on inside the Street View Batcave.

Just like Batman’s underground lair, this warehouse appears to be the base for the whole operation. Panning around, you’ll find the dimly lit room¹ is filled in every direction with dozens and dozens of fully loaded camera cars, some featuring the older camera-only mounts, and others with the newer 3D laser mounts.

Other than the camera cars, there are several other fascinating things to see here, including this setup up of 9 LCD monitors mounted around a couple of old car seats, which would act like a 3D VR room. Is this for checking cameras? Reviewing recorded material? Or live monitoring of the drivers’ progress?

Also of note around the garage are some support vans, lots of bits of computer junk and, in an image captured immediately outside the building, several mysterious black vehicles.

Thanks to VGT.

Obscure geography trivia time: where would you find the steepest street in the world?

You might guess San Francisco. If you’re a Guinness Book of Records-reading smart alec, you might say New Zealand. As it turns out, you’d be wrong – probably. In fact, nobody seems quite sure which is the world’s steepest, and then there’s the problem of what exactly counts as a street anyway.

But we’ve looked into it, got out protractors out, and can now reveal the not-quite-scientifically-verified Google Sightseeing Top Six World’s Steepest Streets! And happily, the intrepid Street View car has struggled its way up (or down) all of them. Here they are, in reverse order:

6) Dornbush Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

In the East Hills area of the city, this quiet-looking residential street has been surveyed at a 31.98% grade – that’s a 17.7° slope. The Street View car missed out one section of the steepest part, which is one-way in the downhill direction. Check out the heavy-duty concrete staircase.

5) Maria Avenue, Spring Valley, California

Here’s a prime example of the “We’ve got a grid system and we’re damn well going to stick to it” school of city planning. Google’s Terrain view shows how the north-south street pattern has been laid out with no regard whatsoever to the steep contours – in fact you have to wonder whether the planners had ever even visited the site!

Maria Avenue marches straight up the southern slope of Dictionary Hill, attaining a surveyed grade of 32% (17.7°) just north of Chestnut Street. This section of road seems to be paved with concrete, and is cut off from the section above: Street View leaps straight across the gap, missing out this part of the road. The next block to the east would have been even steeper – Buena Vista Avenue is shown on the street map, but the builders understandably admitted defeat there.

4) Baxter Street and Fargo Street, Los Angeles, California

We’ll call this one a tie. These two streets are right next to one another in the Silver Lake district of LA, and both have been measured at 32%, but they get the nod over Maria Avenue on account of being altogether more exciting.

Baxter Street goes up and up and up… but then it goes down almost as steeply, giving the alarming impression that you’re about to drive off a cliff as you approach the summit.

Fargo Street is much shorter – only one block – but that’s plenty long enough for the cyclists who enter the annual Fargo Street Hill Climb. In 2008 one nutter rode up it 101 times in one day.

3) Eldred Street, Los Angeles, California

Just pipping Baxter and Fargo, with a 33% (18.3°) grade at its topmost end, LA’s steepest is in the Highland Park area. It rises 67m over only 400m, which presents some interesting challenges for its residents, according to an entertaining LA Times article.

2) Baldwin Street, Dunedin, New Zealand

Despite being listed in the Guinness Book of Records (and having that sign at the bottom), Baldwin Street doesn’t make the top slot. True, the top section attains an impressive 35% (19.3°) grade; true, it’s quite a slog walking up, even with the steps at the side¹; and true, sliding down it in a wheelie bin is a very bad idea; but it’s not the steepest. Unless anyone else knows better, the winner is…

1) Canton Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The signs at the top say “Do Not Enter”, and in slippery conditions you’d do well to heed them. Canton Avenue, a short cobbled street in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighbourhood attains a whopping 37%, or 20.3°, gradient, making it the steepest public road in the United States – and, quite possibly, the world. This YouTube video shows what happens when you try and cycle up it, and this article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has more photos, giving an idea what it’s like to live there in winter. You can bet the residents of this house at the bottom of the hill are quite glad of that crash barrier out the front.

Honourable mentions

Here are a few other contenders that, for various reasons, didn’t quite “make the grade”…

West 28th Street, San Pedro, Los Angeles

Apparently this is officially the steepest LA street, at 33.3% (18.4°, just pipping Eldred), but looking at it on Street View, the steep portion is pathetically short. Next!

Ffordd Pen Llech, Harlech, Wales

This lane, said to be the steepest in Britain, plunges down the side of the steep hill topped by Harlech Castle. Sadly, Street View hasn’t reached rural north Wales yet, but there is high-resolution aerial imagery. The sign at the top claims it to be a 40% (21.8°) slope, but that seems dubious. And in any case, look at the sign just below the gradient warning: “Anaddas i fodur”. Unsuitable for motors. Disqualified on a technicality…

Waipio Valley Road, Hawaii

Now we’re talking: 45% gradient, or 24.2° – just look at those contour lines! Sadly, although this potential record-breaker is paved, it is restricted to 4WD vehicles – and in any case, it’s out in the wilds of the north of the Big Island, and with no houses on it you can hardly call this one a street. Still, it looks like quite a drive, judging by the pictures on this page.

This is the Turning Torso tower in Malmö, which at 190 metres is Sweden’s tallest skyscraper. The most striking thing about this tower is that it appears to be twisted around its axis. It has nine segments of five-story pentagons that are offset from one another, meaning that the topmost segment is set at ninety degrees to the ground floor.

The Turning Torso was designed by world famous Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava (some of whose work we’ve featured in the past), and represents part of a growing trend for elaborately warped and twisted “torqued towers“.

In San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park the new M.H. De Young Museum was completed in October 2005 – replacing the original building that had been damaged in an earthquake. To prevent damage to the new building, it can move almost a metre thanks to a system of sliding plates and fluid dampers. It’s also entirely clad in copper, which will eventually oxidize, taking on a green colour reflective of the surrounding vegetation.

From many places around the park, the most striking feature of the building is the 44 metre Hamon Tower, the impressive twist of which can be clearly seen from both an aerial and ground-level point of view.

Tower designers aren’t just rotating their towers either – although still under construction in Google’s images, the China Central Television Headquarters building was completed in December 2008, and its design almost defies belief. Especially when you consider that this area is also prone to earthquakes!

Technically the CCTV building isn’t a traditional tower, but rather a “continuous loop of six horizontal and vertical sections covering 381,000 square metres of floor space”. This is probably best summed up by the building’s local nickname – “Big Shorts”.

There are several other torqued towers around the world that are either in planning, or already under construction. However I wonder how many of them will be delayed or cancelled due to the current economic climate?

• 1 World Trade Center, New York City, (formerly known as the Freedom Tower), will have a roof set at 45° from the bottom.
• The Infinity Tower, Dubai, will feature a 90° twist like the Turning Torso, but will be nearly twice the height.
• The Chicago Spire, Chicago, also designed by Santiago Calatrava, will be 160 metres taller than the Sears Tower.
• The Burj al-Taqa, Dubai, will feature a twisted hyperboloid design, and will generate all its own energy.

Finally, check out the totally insane Signature Towers and equally ludicrous Dubai Towers Dubai which are both planned for construction in Dubai.

See the amazing skyscraperpage.com for more jaw dropping future skyscrapers.

Thanks to stephan and Vectoor.

The Crenshaw Christian Center’s Faith Dome is a non-denominational megachurch located in the heart of South Los Angeles. With seating for over 10,000 attendants, it is one of the largest places of worship in the United States.

Brainchild of Ever Increasing Faith Ministries pastor Frederick K. Price, construction of the Faith Dome was completed in 1989 on 32 acres of the former Pepperdine University¹ campus. The geodesic church sanctuary is constructed almost entirely of aluminum and hosts Dr. Price’s sermons which reach over 15 million families across the United States each week.

By all reports a lively character, Dr. Price oversaw the construction of this behemoth structure from start to finish. During an inaugural sermon, he described his love for the new church structure, exclaiming “Hallelujah! Jesus just hit a grand-slam home run!”

Situated along a busy flight lane, the Faith Dome is clearly visible to thousands of airline passengers landing at Los Angeles International Airport every day. It seems that Dr. Price and his construction team must have been acutely aware of this fact. An enormous advertisement to anyone looking down, the church’s car park has been emblazoned with gigantic letters proclaiming the Faith Dome’s glorious existence.

Then again, it could be a way of broadcasting to the “big man” himself.

Thanks to stongey and Bird’s Eye Tourist.

Unbelievable, but today is the 4th anniversary of the launch of Google Sightseeing! We shan’t bore you with a potted history – instead we’re revisiting a couple of sights from this day in 2005 to see how things have changed.

Back in 2005, Google Maps’ satellite imagery was barely 24 hours old, and restricted to North America, when we linked to our very first sight – this Mickey Mouse-shaped lake at Disney World, Florida. Interestingly, other than a change in the projection of the images¹ (which stopped everything looking squished), the imagery here hasn’t been updated since then.

In a poor reflection on our imaginations back in 2005, the second sight we posted was even more stereotypically “American”. We think we’ve come a long way since we posted The Hollywood sign, as the entire post simply consisted of the words:

Only just legible, but very cool, the Hollywood sign. Now I don’t need to go there to see it.

The imagery may have been updated since then² (and we’ve gotten a lot more wordy), but the sign never really changes much. However, thanks to Google Street View, we can now get an even better view from the ground.³

Google Sightseeing has come a long way since 2005, and we’re very much looking forward to improving and expanding the site even further in the future. Later this week we’ll be announcing the results of our recruitment drive from a few weeks ago, so there’s going to be lots of new Google Sightseeing to be done over the next four years.

Thanks for reading.