Of Time and the River: A Legend of Man’s Hunger in his Youth, Thomas Wolfe, 1935.
The New York of old seems to be abundant with gruff, hairy characters; intrepid construction workers, tireless labourers and dirty creased knuckles & nails reaching out for meals in soup kitchens. Tenement house walls are papered with newsprint, speakeasies are defiantly crammed full, fountain drenched children splash through Harlem in the hot summers and buttoned up, bespectacled business men trudge the streets, tense against the cold in winter. There are ticker-tape parades, one cent cups of coffee and some really quite incredible headwear!
Anonymous.
Mulberry Street - The heart of the Italian district on the Lower East side and, at one time, one of the most crowded places on earth, 1900. I like the moustacheoed man up in the balcony!
Anonymous.
A hat factory. This is a typical New York small business situated in a loft where the immigrant workforce had to content with low wages and poor working conditions. c. 1900.
Anonymous.
Coenities Slip. This was the last remaining small harbour, or inlet, from the East River that ran just off Pearl Street in Downtown Manhattan. It was also the site of New York’s first City Hall. The elevated train track represents modernity, while the ships moored in the harbour suggest an older New York, c. 1879.
Jacob Riis.
Bandit’s Roost, Taken on Mulberry Stret, these menacing looking men are supposedly a vicious gang that terrorized Five Points. The blowing laundry, suggesting domestic routine, is somewhat incongruos. C. 1888.
Anonymous.
Monday is washday in the city, 1900.
Underwood & Underwood.
A Christmas Day meal at a soup kitchen. New York has always been a city of extremes; fabulously wealthy people and the destitute, early 1900s.
“We expect to wash then once a day, and they will land on American soil clean, if nothing more.”
Assistant commissioner McSweenery on bathing house at the new bureau of immigration quarters at Ellis Island. 1900.
Anonymous.
The main hall of Ellis Island, including the holding pens where people waited for processing. First and second class passengers were spared the Ellis Island experience, and waved through after a cursory inspection on board.
Edward Steichen.
Flatiron building. One of New York’s landmark buildings, shot at twilight near Madison Square Park. Completed in 1902, the Flatiron Building was, at the time, one of the city’s tallest structures. Its distinctive triangular shape sits on a block that separates Broadway and Fifth Avenue, 1904.
Eugene de Salignac.
Delancey Street on the Lower East Side, 1907. This is one of my favourite photos in the book so far. The detail is pin sharp and I love the barefooted little boy in slacks watching the labourers digging the subway tunnel.
Anonymous.
Luna Park at night, lit by more than 1,300,000 electric lights at Coney Island. One attraction being offered here is “Infant Incubators with Living Infants,” but the most popular rides were “War of the Worlds” and “A Trip to the Moon.” Luna Park opened in 1903, and was demolished in 1945, c. 1905.
Alfred Stieglitz
Winter, Fifth Avenue. A technically remarkable photograph, taken with an early handheld camera, which conveys something of the hardships of living in the city, 1893.
Anonymous.
The main concourse at Grand Central Terminal. Grand Central, which heralded the age of electric rails, cost $80 million to build ($2 billion today) and opened in 1913, after ten years of construction. In the 1990s, Grand Central was lovingly restored after decades of neglect.
BEAUTIFUL! This is my absolute favourite picture in the book so far and one of my favourite pictures ever of New York.
Anonymous.
The top of the Woolworth Building. The Gothic Revival skyscraper, designed by Cass Gilbert, was dubbed the “Cathedral of Commerce,” c.1930.
“…the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925.
Underwood & Underwood.
A Harlem mother walking with her two children, late 1920s.
Anonymous.
A Greenwich Village woman, dressed in the flapper style of the Roaring Twenties, hanging up a poster. The Village was the neighbourhood of choice for New York’s radicals, bohemians, gay people, and artists, mid-1920s.
Anonymous.
A demonstration by unemployed workers (their various trades are on display) prepared to labor for $1 a week during the Great Depression, 1930s.
Anonymous.
An investor who lost everything in the Wall Street crash is selling his automobile for $100, 1929.
Anonymous.
Sunset over the smog-filled metropolis, c. 1934. What an incredible (& rather mysterious) vantage point. The tiny boats & outline of the buildings reminds me of the shot I took of San Francisco from the air.
Morris Engel.
Coney Island, 1938.
Bernice Abbott.
Huts and the Unemployed. Despite the New Deal and the ambitious public works program initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it took World War II to finally lift America out of the Great Depression, 1935.
I actually noticed this picture after I’d finished making the post and had to quickly grab a shot so I could include it. Whether the framed pictures were to cover up holes in the roof after running out of wooden boards or simply to brighten the place up, I love the lop sided print of the cats peering into the fishbowl! I’m also fascinated by the sweeping brush which seems futile at best.
Anonymous.
One-cent coffee stand, 1933.
Arnold Eagle
Across Stuyvesant Town Development. Stuyvesant Town, near the East River, was a postwar housing project for returning veterans. It was built in 1942-43, but it is especially controversial because Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, who instigated the development, lobbied that the apartments be made available only to white veterans, early 1940s.
Berenice Abbott
Tempo of the City. Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, photographed from above, demonstrating New York’s bustle, crowds and manic energy, 1937.
I’ve been fascinated by the people in this photograph ever since I had the book. As most of them are shot from the back it’s difficult to tell anything about them, they crossed the road and disappeared off back into their own lives. I wonder how many of them even know they were in this picture. I’ve wondered about the couple at the back particularly.
Alexander Alland
Chinatown merchants. Chinatown was a mix of Chinese from Taiwan and Mainland China. More recently, it is home to Burmese, Vietnamese, and Filipinos. It is a commercial and residential area and a major tourist attraction, 1940.
I bet these two old guys are a right pair of mischiefs! They probably make all kinds of dirty jokes and have terrible bad habits!
Charles Cushman.
South Ferry. 1941.
I’ve only included this picture because the description says, “Note the pun advertising the services of Loans Schwartz on the vendor’s sunshade.” What pun?! I’m baffled! Would someone explain this to me, please?
Aubury Pollard
Unemployed women waiting to be hired, 1939.
Arnold Eagle.
Commuters closely following events during World War II. The newspaper headline refers to the terrible prospect of an alliance between Stalin and Hitler, 1939.
Alfred Eisenstaedt. VJ Day, 1945.
Alfred Eisentaedt's most well known (&
mysterious) photograph... I think this is a nice place to end this post.
