Sarah Wrote That

Night Scene, West from 500 Fifth Ave, showing Times, Paramount, Astor & Edison Hotels.
Byron Company, 1937 (photographer unnamed)

by Wired New York contributor @ddny2k

Impressions of the Maiden Voyage of the ‘Queen Mary’ to New York (1936)
Charles Chislett
Yorkshire Film Archive | Cunard Queens [blog]

You really do want to click through to this 30 min. black and white silent film (unfortunately not embeddable). Chislett brought his camera through Times Square at night, on the El, up to “The Yankee Stadium,” and to the top of the Woolworth and Empire State Buildings. He traveled across the Atlantic third class:

The cost of a trip to New York was, for cabin class, £53.15s (equivalent to £2,710 in today’s money, r.p.i.) – according to Merseyside Maritime Museum, this was enough to “keep a family with three children in food for over a year.” The cost for third class was £18.10 (equivalent to £942 in today’s money, r.p.i.) …[…] taking into account how average earnings have risen since 1936 makes it equivalent to £3,530. A considerable sum for a 31 year old bank employee (and this may well have been the cost for just for a one-way ticket!).

Columbus Circle, 1892
Museum of the City of New York

These electric poles are terrifying.

photo: 6th Avenue above 14th Street c. 1898
William Henry Jackson, Vintage Detroit Photographic Co.

10 Dec 2011 12:34

andrewgraham:

You might say it’s foggy out in NYC this morning. (pic via)

Ah, that holiday classic, “Baby it’s foggy and mild.” (Also, World Wide Plaza, you’re looking fine).

Reblogged from this might not hurt, but close your eyes anyways

I like my Independence

by M.Joedike
34th St and 2nd Ave New York, May 1979

“Don’t Walk”
East Midtown, 2001

Midtown Manhattan from the U.S.S. Kearsage
New York Fleet Week 2006 (click thru for larger)

Thunder was already rumbling all around when I took the shots stitched together here, and I was extremely aware of being on the highest (steel, loaded with electronics) point for blocks.

Stills from William H. Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
Municipal Art Society

Very odd to remember these looks as simply the way things were*

*ok, not #7

(Source: vimeo.com)

24 Apr 2011 12:22