A duo who documented the birth of NYC’s subway | Hacker News Reader

A duo who documented the birth of NYC’s subway

atlasobscura.com

59 pointsprismatic17 comments

I'm astounded by the interesting material that Atlas Obscura reports on; they make history that much more fun to learn about!

Also, is this a German flag (alongside the U.S. flag) at the top of a "Chop Suey" sign (lower-left section of the photo)?? If so, why a German flag??? https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/lg/73195/imag...

Finally...

> "...A lot of the people in these photographs, we’ll never know their names... "

My hope with facial recognition technology - and in my opinion one of the very, very few acceptable/responsible uses of this tech. - is when descendants of these workers can pair their own family photos with these publicly-available photos to learn more about their own families, but also - if they so choose - to share the names of these anonymous workers with the world (to give them the credit that they so richly deserve for building our essential infrastructure).

It's a chinese flag, the old republic of china flag. Also known as the five races flag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Races_Under_One_Union

Ah-ha, weird, after immediately seeing the flag, I went to Wikipedia...but on the Chinese flags page they didn't list the flag that you found...which does answer the mystery for me! Thanks!

It's like a precursor to the "one country two systems" moniker, which is really one country five systems if you actually count.

> Also, is this a German flag (alongside the U.S. flag) at the top of a "Chop Suey" sign (lower-left section of the photo)?? If so, why a German flag???

Maybe it's a Dutch flag: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Netherlands#/med...

New York was originally Dutch, and before being called New York, it was part of what was called New Amsterdam: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Amsterdam

Ah, ok. I guess that would make better sense than German flag.

> Sometimes they’d walk down a block and stop to take a photograph every 10 or 15 feet.

Sort of a Google Streets predecessor

Correct me if I'm wrong but that's still the way Google Street View is updated in some of the more remote places, either ones that Google doesn't deign visiting or those inaccessible by its camera car.

It's hard for me to imagine New York City being so safe and relaxed about security that no one had a problem letting any old dude with a camera into underground construction sites to take pictures.

Also note not a hard-hat in sight. This is on the eve of modern attitudes towards workplace safety, which got a big boost from reporting on worker deaths associated with the Hoover Dam project.

There are hard hats on display in this exhibition if you go to the museum.

The way I read the article, they were hired to take these pictures.

> Portions of the brothers’ vast archive are on display at the New York Transit Museum through January 21, 2021.

They should put all these photos on-line.

Is there a copy on a site that doesn't have a cookie wall?

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You can always use Firefox containers to maintain your privacy.

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