http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/expert-has-figured-out-real-life-location-vermeers-little-street-painting-180957696/?no-ist
Grijzenhout pinpointed the little street to the stretch in front of present-day No. 40 and 42 Vlamingstraat, Delft.
Grijzenhout consulted a historical document, De legged van het deepen der watered binned de star Delft (The ledger of the dredging of the canals in the town of Delft), which was published in 1667, just a decade after the painting was created. The ledger includes a calculation of how much tax each house owner needed to pay, and records the width of each building and nearby passageways.
Two houses, about 20.6-feet wide with adjacent passageways that measured just under four-feet wide, proved to be a match for the houses and paths in the painting. Those buildings have since been replaced — though the passageways remain —they were there when Vermeer would have painted them. “There was no other place in Delft during that time where this constellation was found.”
