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Add as preferred source A 19th-century real estate agent created the world's first version of Rightmove more than 160 years before the birth of online property previews.
Brooks and Green, a high-end real estate agent based on Old Bond Street in London, used an early form of immersive visual technology called a cosmorama to offer prospective buyers a virtual tour of the properties it was selling.
New research by the University of Exeter has discovered that for 20 years during the 1840s and '50s, decades before photography was used to advertise property, Brooks and Green had created its own version of a "digital walkthrough."
The discovery has emerged as part of a broader study of the history of the cosmorama across Europe and its contribution to the development of "show business." It has been published in a special themed edition of Early Popular Visual Culture .
"For half a century, the cosmorama was one of the most common forms of visual show across Europe and the Americas," said Professor John Plunkett, an expert in 19th-century visual media and lead author of the paper. "Similar in format to other early forms of immersive entertainment, such as the peepshow, the cosmorama offered picture galleries for the people, tapping into an era of greater travel and offering views of international tourist sites and scenes from across the British Empire.
"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 used by one of a new type of dedicated real estate agents seeking to sell a growing number of luxury properties and country estates."
These new insights have emerged through the European research project, CURIOSITAS: Peeping Before Virtual Reality. A Media Archaeology of Immersion Through VR and the Iberian Cosmoramas, led by the Universidade Lusófona in Lisbon.
Plunkett worked with the project team to investigate the history of this visual technology in the United Kingdom and Ireland. By analyzing newspaper archives containing ads and articles, he mapped its emerging use, particularly from the 1820s onward. The research project cataloged more than 650 cosmoramas in Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom, with many others exhibited in countries as far apart as North America, Brazil, Cuba and Australia.
In cosmorama galleries, the paintings were not immediately visible. They were hidden behind walls and viewed through convex lenses that enlarged them and enhanced their depth effects. With the addition of clever lighting effects, the viewer enjoyed an immersive experience. From lens to lens, the viewer would embark on a picturesque journey around the world.
Plunkett found examples of cosmorama galleries in cities across Britain and Ireland. The paper explores how cosmoramas began appearing in urban bazaars—the 19th-century equivalent of a department store—as well as becoming a popular feature of the touring shows that traveled around Britain.
And it was during this research that Plunkett, of Exeter's Department of English and Creative Writing, found evidence that a London business was using a cosmorama in a truly innovative way. Ads in London newspapers in the late 1830s revealed that auctioneer and surveyor Brooks and Hedger (later, Brooks and Green), on Old Bond Street, close to the Cosmorama Rooms of Regent Street, were offering cosmoramic views of some of the properties and estates they were selling.
The firm advertised its cosmoramic views until at least 1859. It claimed that its gallery included "several Hundred Views of different estates" from an "Aerial Perspective" showing the house and relevant grounds. Plunkett said that for each view produced, an artist would have had to spend time at the property, making it a labor-intensive process likely reserved for the more exclusive sales.
He said, "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 walkthrough. Nineteenth-century buyers had no such advantages.
"But the founding of the first specialized real estate agents set in motion a more professional approach to marketing property, fueled by population growth, urbanization and improved transportation links. In that context, we can see how Brooks and Green pioneered the virtual tour, more than 150 years before digital technology would fully realize the potential."
John Plunkett, Cosmoramas, immersive viewing and the evolution of peep practice, Early Popular Visual Culture (2026). DOI: 10.1080/17460654.2026.2700727
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