A Slide show of Classic Black & White photos from the 1920's and 1930's of New York City. Showing the best and worst the city had to offer. Long before the population explosion and the sky scrapers took over the skyline.

1. New York City
In The Early Days, before the
building expansion, the
population explosion and
pollution changed things forever.
Enjoy.. 

2. Woolworth

3. West Street, 1885

4. Herald Sq., 1888. 6th Ave. El.

5. Terminal, 1892. -Alfred Stieglitz.

6. Winter, 1893. -Stieglitz.

7. Broadway, 1894

8. Herald Square, 1895

9. Lower Broadway, 1899. Lots of hats.

10. Police Parade, 1899. Bowler
hats, hardly any women.

11. Tiffany’s, Union Sq., 1899. Early car
and some figures added by artist.

12. Getting a ticket, 1900

13. Easter, Fifth Avenue, 1900. One car
visible, coming towards foreground.

14. Hester St., Lower East Side, 1901.

15. Flatiron, 1903. -Burnham.

16. Broad St.,1904. Stock Exchange and Federal Hall.

17. Municipal Building under construction,
1904. -McKim. No cars.

18. The Belmont Coach, 1905.
Four horses. Dogs run free.

19. Easter, Fifth Ave., 1906. No cars.

20. City Hall subway, 1907. Turkish headhouses.

21. Lower East Side, 1908.

22. Herald Square, 1909. Skyscraper beyond is NY Times Building in
Times Sq. Cars have replaced horses.

23. Automatic Vaudeville, Union Sq., 1910.

24. Downtown skyline with Singer Building., 1910. World’s tallest.

25. Downtown skyline with Woolworth Building., 1913. World’s tallest.

26. Birdseye, 1913, with artist’s enhancement. Hand colored.

27. Federal Crowd Control, 1918. Machine guns in front, modified phalanx.
Soldiers on sides assigned to upstairs windows. Wilson feared antiwar
riots, losing mind to small strokes.

28. Times Square from New York Times Building., 1922.

29. HMS Leviathan and Singer Building., 1923.

30. Fifth Ave., 1924. Buses and taxis on parade.

31. Coney Island, 1928. -Walker Evans.

32. Lower Broadway Tickertape, 1928. For Bremen crew, first east-west transatlantic flight.

33. 1928. Three biggest spires not yet built. Fairchild Aerial Surveys.

34. 1935 Philadelphia, just for fun. Skyscraper density nearly matched New York’s. -Fairchild.

35. Chrysler Gargoyle, 1929.

36. 42nd Street, 1929. -Walker Evans.

37. Building the Empire State, 1930. -Lewis Hine.

38. Icarus, 1930. -Hine.

39. Liberty, 1930. With symbols.

40. 1931. -Fairchild.

41. Midtown, 1931. The tracks lead to Penn Station.
Post Office spans tracks, may some day be Penn Station. -Fairchild.

42. Sikorsky Clipper, 1931. New spires gleam. River traffic, piers, ocean liner in slip.

43. Midtown’s lineup of spires with sky in between, 1931.

44. Six engines! 1931.

45. The valley between, 1931.

46. Brooklyn foreground, 1931.
Small scale dense area between bridges on Manhattan side now a Ville Radieuse. -Fairchild.

47. Spires of Gotham, 1932

48. Tropical Drinks Five Cents, 1932

49. Subway execs inspect new subway car, 1933.
Breakthrough blowers ventilate with windows closed! Cane seats.

50. Columbus Circle, 1933.
No Time-Warner, no Trump International, no Venetian Palazzetto.

51. Just $24 in 1626?
More than that in 1933.

52. Three-point perspective, 1934.

53. Chambers at Oak. Horse-drawn wagon.

54. Bowery.

55. Henry St. Beyond, Towers of Zenith loom in the mist.

56. Mad King Ludwig in Greenwich Village:
Jefferson Market, then Jefferson Courthouse, now Jefferson Library, 6th Avenue.

57. Murray Hill Hotel with fancy fire escape.

58. Cities Service Tower.
Horse-drawn wagons lingered into the mid-sixties.

59. Prickly skyline with famous bridge, 1935.

60. Times Square, 1935. Betty Boop on the marquee.
The Astor came down mid-sixties, along with Penn Station and Singer Building: a
bad time for beaux-arts. Streetcars in the square, no overhead wires.

61. Times Square looking South to Times Building. Mid-sixties this was stripped to
steel skeleton and re-clothed in kitsch marble by mod illustrator Peter Max.
More bad times for beaux-arts.

62. The El featured potbellied stoves.

63. Fifth Avenue bus in Washington Square.

64. Dapper in front of Dock Department.

65. Billie’s Bar, First Ave. at 56th.

66. Bowery and Doyer. 3rd Ave. El.

67. Christopher and Bleecker.
A wood-clad survivor.

68. Church of God, E. 132nd St.

69. Ferry, Chambers St.

70. Greyhound and Penn Station.

71. Herald Square.
Chain-drive trucks also survived into the sixties.

72. Manhattan Bridge.

73. Milk Truck, Greenwich Village.

74. Newspaper (Park) Row. Center building once tallest.
-Berenice Abbott.

75. Park Ave. and 39th.

76. At Hudson River terminus of Cortlandt St.
Motorized and horse-drawn vans transferred goods to and from barge-borne railcars.

77. Pike and Henry, Lower East Side.
With Manhattan Bridge and a horse.

78. S. Klein On-The-Square, Union Sq. Contraposto.

79. Union Square with Turkish subway kiosk.
Is that man using a cellphone?

80. Magnificent Manhattan spires from Willow and
Poplar, Brooklyn. Cathedrals of Commerce.

81. Avenue D and 10th St. Chain-drive truck.

82. Hester Street.

83. Riverside Drive Viaduct.

84. Oyster House, South Street, under Manhattan
Bridge, with pile of oyster shells.

85. Father Duffy, Times Square.
-Andre Kertesz, 1937.

86. Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn (now DUMBO).
-Kertesz, 1937.

87. Henry Hudson Parkway at 72nd St.
Fancy interchange. -Fairchild Aerial Surveys, 1937.

88. Rockefeller Ctr., 1937. St. Thomas’ Church at
left, site of Jackie O’s funeral. -Fairchild.

89. Simply Add Boiling Water, 1937. -Weegee.

90. The old Met(ropolitan Opera).
Garment District, 1937. -Weegee.

91. Still clean and gleaming, the Towers of Zenith, 1937.

92. The Duke Mansion, a tobacco tycoon.
1 E. 78th St. at Fifth Ave.

93. 40th between 6th and 7th.
Zoning generates the form.

94. Flam & Flam Lawyers.
165 E. 121st St.

95. Wall Street from 60 Wall.

96. From 60 Wall Street.

97. Cathedral Parkway (110th Street).

98. Columbus Circle Building with Coke sign another of Hearst’s skyscraper bases.
Unlike the one Foster is currently completing, this one was torn down for the Gulf and
Western Building, now re-imagined by Phillip Johnson as the Trump International Hotel.

99. Jefferson Market with the hulking, deco Women’s House of Detention behind (now demolished for a park).
From the barred, open windows, the ladies would hurl obscenities at passersby.

100. 504-506 Broome St. Ancient.

101. Union Square West. A hilarious jumble gets A+ for accidental design.
These lots once held town houses. Their dainty footprints have been preserved, so the buildings have a
delicate scale regardless of their height. One is a miniature skyscraper.
Scale-obsessed NIMBYs take note: you need to object to a building’s footprint, not its height.

102. From Jersey, the classic skyline view.

103. Subway Portrait. Walker Evans, 1938.

104. Artists and Poets, Washington Sq., 1939

105. 42nd Street Beauties, looking west, 1939.

106. Clipper, 1939. Europe in 29 hours.

107. DC-4 Over Midtown, 1939.
Hood’s Daily News Building lower right.

108. Fish market meets railroad under
Roebling’s bridge, 1939.

109. Abandoned in the downpour, 1939. West Side.

110. Forty-second Street.

111. Sixth Avenue El, 1940.

112. Downtown from Empire State. -Andre Kertesz, 1940.

113. Ninth Avenue El, 8th at 127th, Harlem. -Feininger

114. The Bowery.-Feininger

115. Bryant Park.-Feininger

116. Downtown Skyport with Cities Service Tower.

117. The original twin towers.

118. Tower trio. Slender flattop is Irving Trust.
Tower at right now belongs to Trump.

119. New York’s greatest walk.

120. Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

121. Girlies.

122. Downtown gunsmith.

123. Three icons: Empire State. Horn and Hardart (The
Automat), New York’s original restaurant chain, long
gone. Lamp standard, now being re-installed.

124. Elevated.

125. Central Park looking southeast toward Grand Army Plaza. The baronial Savoy-Plaza Hotel dominates with
its vast, vaguely French roof and twin chimneys: another major Beaux-Arts landmark demolished mid-
sixties. Replaced by Stone’s vapid GM Building, recently acquired by Trump.

126. Elevated station, Downtown.

127. Underwear and kosher chickens.

128. What happens when you burn coal.

129. A Greek temple burning coal.

130. Flatiron with Fifth Avenue bus.

131. Garment District stacked factories steam hats.

132. Arm wrestling in Harlem.

133. Harlem night club.

134. Lower East Side, tenement city, looking north.

135. Streetwall: Park Avenue South.

136. Raymond Hood, master of Deco.

137. Seventh Avenue.

138. South Street, now a theme park and mall.

139. At the foot of 42nd Street: Normandie with three fat stacks in the middle, Queen
Mary with three skinnier stacks at bottom. Normandie burned here, Nazi sabotage
claimed. Normandie was that time’s biggest and fastest (Blue Ribbon).

140. Forty-second Street. Mid-size Beaux-Arts skyscraper on north side of street is
Times Building, of New Year’s fame. Building still exists but re-clad in mid-sixties.

141. Classic skyline view with America, junior edition United States.

142. Downtown from Jersey.

143. Midtown from Jersey.

144. Horror vacui, Hebrew style.

145. The hats match the canopies. Macy’s, 34th St.

146. Tisayac by Eadweard Muybridge, best known for time-lapse photos of men and horses running
before graph paper backgrounds. He also famously murdered his wife’s lover in San Francisco.

147. Tutokanula by Muybridge.

148. Volcano.

149. The horse in motion.

150. The horse in motion. 2

151. 3
The horse in motion.

152. Cockatoo flying.

153. Man on steps.

154. 6

155. Men Acrobatics.

156. The classic pyramid, here with harbor traffic and puffs of pollution.

157. Suits on the pier. What are these men doing?

158. Fulton Street from South Street.

159. Broome Street and Baruch Place,
Lower East Side.
Not a sidewalk café.

160. Lower East Side: The street as the living room.

161. Lower East Side: The street as the conference room.

162. Municipal Building, Courthouse and Jail.
Big arch seemed futile before El removed.
Fairchild Aerial Surveys, 1941.

163. Lunch, 5 Cents: looking up Broadway to Singer Building.

164. Collecting the Salvage on Lower East Side.

165. Pearl Street, 1942.

166. Central Park. -Feininger, 1943.

167. The Fashionable People
[harassed by the homeless]. -Weegee, 1943.

168. Murder in Hell’s Kitchen. -Weegee, 1944.

169. Coney Island. -Weegee, 1945.

170. The photographer Weegee (Arthur Fellig).

171. Hole where plane (B-25) hit Empire State Building, 1945.

172. Brooklyn, 1947. -Andre Kertesz.

173. Lower 5th Avenue. -Kertesz, 1948.

174. East River Esplanade. -Kertesz, 1948.

175. Metropolitan Life and Empire State. Kertes, 1950.

176. City. -Kertesz, 1952.

177. Washington Square. Kertesz, 1954.

178. A city of spires.
Just before the flattop invasion, late fifties.

179. First view of Manhattan from the Queen
Elizabeth, 1953. The module of the window.

180. Liberty, 1954.

181. Times Square with James Dean. -Dennis Stock, 1955.

182. Balcony. -Kertesz, 1957.

183. Guggenheim under construction, 1958. Car and
building share design philosophy.

184. MacDougal Alley. -Kertesz,1958.

185. Sixth Avenue. -Kertesz, 1959.

186. Man Sleeping. -Kertesz, 1960.

187. Whitehall street from Peter Minuit Plaza near
Battery. -Cushman, 1960.

188. Rooftop, 1961.

189. Harlem, 1963.

190. Washington Square, 1969. Edge of Arch at left.

191. Washington Square Arch, 1970.

192. Woody Allen and Cleopatra Jones,1971.

193. Lying Men, Washington Sq. -Kertesz, 1974.

194. Kertesz, 1979.

195. World Trade Center. -Dennis Stock, 2001.

196. Chrysler Building.

197. Chrysler Building.

198. Two Greatest Beaux-Arts Buildings Demolished:
The main waiting room. Groined vaults in coffered stone.

199. The Baths of Caracalla.

200. The way to the trains.

201. Groined vaults in steel and glass.

202. Seventh Avenue. McKim, Meade and White, architects.
1903-1963. The building made it to age 60.

203. 613 feet!! In 1908!

204. Ernest Flagg was the architect.

205. This building also made it to age 60. 1908-1968.

206. Another five years and they would have
preserved it.

207. French Beaux-Arts.

208. Vacant and awaiting demolition.

209. From Broadway.

210. Queen Elizabeth and skyline. -Andre Kertesz, 1958.

211. Castles in the Sky. This might be the most
romantic picture of New York, ever.

212. My favorite shot.

213. Visit the following site…
GreenTaxIncentives.com
Help by changing your ways.