This photograph was taken by the City of New York to document construction along Seventh Avenue. The date is Tuesday, August 29 ,1916. The high temperature for the day was a comfortable 71 degrees.
The extension of the subway from Times Square south of Seventh Avenue to the Battery would necessitate ripping up the street along the route. Continue reading
112 years ago today one of New York’s most venerable merchants Lord & Taylor moved into their new store on Fifth Avenue between 38th and 39th Street.
This advertisement in The New York Sun newspaper appeared a couple of days before the new store would open. Lord & Taylor’s first store on Catherine Street opened in 1826. Lord & Taylor moved many times before settling into their new 11-story building on February 24, 1914. Continue reading
The lower Manhattan Skyline from Jersey City circa 1914 showing (l-r) Municipal Building; Woolworth; Hudson Terminal; City Investment; Singer; West Street; Trinity; American Surety; Bankers Trust; U.S. Express and Manhattan Life. by H.H Tammen Co., New York
The thrill of viewing New York from the water was once a daily occurrence for hundreds of thousands of people. Until 1903 when the Williamsburg Bridge opened the only bridge crossing to lower Manhattan was the Brooklyn Bridge. The subway would open in 1904.
The majority of people arriving from New Jersey, Staten Island or Brooklyn would take a ferry boat. As building technology advanced, the view from the New York Bay, the East River and The Hudson was rapidly changing.
Over a 40 year period from 1892 -1932 with the building of skyscrapers, the lower New York skyline would become an instantly recognizable view featured in art, photographs and motion pictures.
Here are some postcard river views of the city. All cards were scanned at 600 dpi.
This card “New York From Hoboken” is not that sharp in detail but clearly shows two of the city’s tallest buildings circa 1900. Slightly to the left Continue reading
New York City has a lot of beggars with children. It always has.
If you look up from your phone you’ll see them weaving through subway cars or standing or sitting mid-block or on corners with children close by. Continue reading
Nathan (Nat) D. Lobell’s Of Things That Used To Be A Childhood On Fox Street In The Bronx In The Early Twentieth Century is a memoir concentrating on a striving South Bronx neighborhood full of immigrants, primarily Jewish, Irish and Italian between World War I and the 1920s. Continue reading
The two illustrations seen here are excerpts from a full page ad. This advertisement comes from the April 27, 1919 New York Sun daily newspaper. Shown is an array of intimates of the late teens that a fashionable woman would wear beneath their clothes.
The uptown location of James McCreery & Co. at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street Continue reading
On January 9, 1912, the Equitable Life Assurance Building at 120 Broadway was destroyed in a fire of historic proportions.
In 2012 we covered the 100th anniversary of this historic fire and its consequences. Continue reading
The cover of Life Magazine by Albert Dodd Blashfield (1860-1920) features this allegorical scene of the old year sitting at a table with the new year. What the symbolism of the pose, wine, smoking, hourglass and table setting boils down to is: out with the old and in with new.
The original Life Magazine (not the 1936 -1972 photo-journal magazine version of Life) featured humor, cartoons and short articles. Continue reading
Charlie Chaplin photo: United Artists
This 1919 portrait of Charlie Chaplin taken at the height of his success shows that behind the make-up and little mustache was a handsome man.
Chaplin, as one of the co-founders of United Artists in 1919 with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith, had many official publicity photographs taken like the one above and below to promote the founding of the company.
The historic moment taken when the papers of incorporation were signed creating United Artists Corporation on April 17, 1919. Left to right in the foreground are the founders. D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.. In the background are their attorneys, Albert Banzhaf and Dennis O’Brien. photo: United Artists
From the Detroit Publishing Company comes this lightly trafficked view of Fifth Avenue. By 1915 horses were being phased out of daily street life and a large portion of the vehicular traffic is motorized. Continue reading
