There are some small streets in 19th century Belfast that were never mapped before they were demolished. They do appear in street directories. Is it possible to recreate a map based on street directories?
The great thing about (some) street directories is that they list every address and intersection in order. In this way, they preserve a large amount of data about the topolocical relations between these features.
It should therefore be possible to map them out as a network, even if the position of each node (address or intersection) is not known. Think of it like a subway map, where the precise positions are not as relevant as their relations:
Some features still exist today, and can be geocoded to give their coordinates to "anchor" the network at various points in space, like pinning strings of beads to a board.
Assuming that each address has a similar length of frontage can give more clues than just using the intersections alone. Layout algrithms should be able to place the addresses with no known positions in a street-like fashion (try to to make the strings straight-ish, try not to cross them oover where there is no intersection, etc.)
The best results for a proof of concept so far have come from Cytoscape:
It should be possible to eventually convert strings like this into LineStrings and other relations used in GIS/mapping systems, which can be overlaid onto modern or old georeferenced maps.