Every building in NYC, circa 1940..

[Princess Turandot]

The NYC Municipal Archives recently digitized a collection of photos taken during the 1940s of every building in NYC.

The black and white photos were intended to aid the city in assessing property taxes: as a result, they're not exactly worthy of framing. But if you are familiar with an area and want to see how it looked 70-some years ago, it's kind of cool. When I looked at the building where I grew up, I was quite surprised to see that it once had a small garden area in front of it.

Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration, in conjunction with the New York City Department of Taxation, organized teams of photographers to shoot pictures of every building in the five boroughs of New York City. The photographs were taken to improve the process of determining and recording property value assessments.

This link is to the Manhattan set: http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/NYCMA~5~5
The 'category pages' option lets you select places/streets by name from a list.

You can select a different borough using the menu on the left.

[pansypoo53219]

1. cool.

time travel.

[Sherman A1]

2. Thanks for posting

Love the old pictures

[PJMcK]

3. Fantastic!

Thanks for the link, Princess.

We live in an older building on East 97th Street and it was very easy to find. Weirdly, it almost looks exactly the same! For years, we've wondered how old the building actually is; now we know it was built in 1920.

It's really fun to browse the old photos.

[oldsoftie]

4. Thats really neat. I sent the link to a friend who owns several buildings in town.

She didnt live there till the late 90s, so all this will be cool to her.

[3Hotdogs]

5. This was a W.P.A. project. Another was the iconography of New York City.

It is a compilation of municipal legislation, newspaper articles and other primary sources from 1620 to the thirties -- whenever it was completed. As I recall, it was three volumes and expensive. I talked my high school library into ordering a copy and had my students use it and N.Y.T. microfilm for extra credit research.

One of my students published a book about crime in N.Y.C. in the 1870. He has since published in the N.Y.T.

I recall reading about the problem of pigs being allowed to roam the streets. In 1720, this was forbidden. Other stuff was fun. Such as Peter Stuyvesant not being popular as governor of N.Y. Or the response to King George's Stamp Act where an estimated 2/3 of the city's populaton showed up at the harbor and chased away the ship carrying the stamps.

[Recursion]

6. This is supremely cool, thank you! (nt)

[Alliepoo]

7. How COOL!!!

This is so interesting!! Thanks for posting this!!

[zentrum]

8. Thanks!

[Dennis Donovan]

9. The WPA hired hundreds of photographers before WW2...

...specifically, the Farm Security Administration and the Resettlement Administration, sent them out all over the country to photodocument aspects of American life. Dorothea Lange, Jack Delano, John Collier, et al.

I visit shorpy.com daily - they post all of these photos in high resolution.

[defacto7]

10. This is a great site!

[shenmue]

11. Very beautiful

[NYMinute]

12. Beautiful pictures of a bygone era

Appreciate your post