A London estate agent was offering prospective buyers an early form of “virtual property tour” more than 160 years before online listings and digital walk-throughs became commonplace.
Researchers have discovered that Brooks and Green, a high-end estate agency based in Old Bond Street, used an immersive visual technology known as a cosmorama during the 1840s and 1850s to promote sales of luxury homes and country estates to potential buyers.
The technique, which could be described as a Victorian precursor to today’s online property previews, allowed customers to view specially commissioned images of properties through convex lenses that enlarged the pictures and created an illusion of depth. Combined with carefully controlled lighting, the displays gave viewers an immersive experience decades before photography became a standard part of property marketing.
The findings form part of a wider study into the history of the cosmorama across Europe and its role in the development of immersive entertainment.
Professor John Plunkett, an expert in 19th-century visual media at the University of Exeter and lead author of the study, said the technology had previously been regarded largely as nothing more than a form of entertainment.
“For half a century, the cosmorama was one of the most common forms of visual show across Europe and the Americas,” he said. “What we’ve discovered through this latest research project, however, is that its use extended beyond simple entertainment. The appeal of cosmoramas was that they sold an experience of virtual travel. This was utilised by estate agents seeking to sell luxury properties and country estates.”
By examining newspaper advertisements and articles, researchers catalogued more than 650 documented cosmoramas in Portugal, Spain and the UK, alongside many others exhibited across North and South America and Australia.
Professor Plunkett also traced the spread of cosmorama galleries across Britain and Ireland, where they appeared in bazaars, travelling shows and dedicated exhibition spaces.
During the research, he uncovered newspaper advertisements showing that Brooks and Hedger – later renamed Brooks and Green – had begun offering cosmoramic views of properties from the late 1830s. The firm’s advertisements continued until at least 1859 and claimed to include “several hundred views of different estates” presented from an “aerial perspective”, showing both the house and its surrounding grounds.
Each image would have required an artist to visit the property and create a detailed illustration, making the process expensive and likely limited to prestigious homes and estates.
Professor Plunkett said the discovery highlights how estate agents were already experimenting with more sophisticated marketing techniques as Britain’s property market became increasingly professionalised.
“In contemporary life, prospective purchasers of real estate are usually aided by a full suite of photographs and floor plans, and often an online video walk-through,” he said. “Nineteenth-century buyers had no such advantages.
“But the founding of the first specialised estate agents set in motion a more professional approach to marketing property, fuelled by population growth, urbanisation and improved transport links. In that context, we can see how Brooks and Green pioneered the virtual tour, over 150 years before digital technology would fully realise this potential.”
The research has been published in Early Popular Visual Culture.