Street View of 1940s New York | Hacker News Reader

Street View of 1940s New York

1940s.nyc

248 pointsmsaltz76 comments

What's wild to me as how little has changed. I lived on Mulberry at Canal for a long time, the builds for all intents and purposes are exactly same buildings. After that I lived on Ainslie at Lorimer in Brooklyn, again, buildings are for the most part, the same. Then I moved to Union and Ainslie, this is the only area that has changed substantially, most of the buildings at this intersection have been totally demolished to make way for new condos, but the buildings between the condos and on the smaller side streets are pretty much the same. I always knew this when I lived in New York, but looking at it this way is quite visceral.

It seems like a market failure that there has been no incentive to tear down and upgrade any of these old buildings as the land has become more valuable. Or maybe it's a regulatory failure.

Property developers have to buy up the section of a block to demo(lish) and build something worthwhile. Many of the buildings are individually/family owned, with little incentive to change/think about change or some pride in passing the building down generationally. If you have an annuity (rents) sitting on top of appreciating land value and you're old or a son/daughter (usually living elsewhere collecting a rent cheque), why bother/how can you convince your neighbors to as well? That's why the section around Ainslie and Union I mentioned was able to be converted, they're all business/warehouses, a condo there now was in the 1940 picture an auto repair garage with the same footprint as the condo, but the house next to it still stands as is.

Is "demo" for "demolish" common usage?

EDIT: non-native speaker trying to improve my English by asking questions about English used in the wild; not trying to be judgemental

My friends in the trades have used the word fairly regularly. I'd say yes.

Very common in the US and Canada but probably not outside (updated my comment).

Common in New Zealand.

Not in the UK. I'd be very confused by that usage. "Demo" means "demonstration" or "demonstrate". Maybe builders might use it that way but I've not ever heard it.

Native-born bi-coastal boomer American here. Never heard this usage until my house was remodeled and the general contractor used it. I had to stop him and ask what he meant. (I didn’t feel too stupid since the vowels and syllable stress are different.)

Or maybe a cultural and societal win...

I have to respectfully disagree. Tearing down and rebuilding is not a universal good, and I wish we were more careful about building well in the first place and preserving the history and context of the people who came before us. To me this means that the initial build was well-conceived and a good long term investment as that capital and labor expenditure has lasted a long time. Tearing down and rebuilding is wasteful.

I would've thought in an ideal world you would do things sufficiently well the first time so that you don't have to tear down the old work and redo it again. Not the opposite.

The ideal world upgrades incrementally.

You're saying it's better to get something wrong and fix it than to just do it right the first time?

I think he is saying, ideal world changes a little bit all the time, instead of tear down and redo.

I guess we're saying the same thing then, because my point wasn't that you'd never build anything new, but that your old stuff would remain just as useful and you wouldn't need to destroy any part of it.

This is an economic failure, but not a market failure. The failure is precisely because of rising land-use restrictions obstructing the market, especially in key centers of the economy, like New York, and especially since the 1960s:

https://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/growth.pdf

Interestingly there's no pictures of the Rockefeller University or Weill-Cornell Hospital, though they are both clearly there in the aerial photos. The big apartment building Rockefeller housed me in at 63rd and York is a rundown factory at that time.

I think the photographs are all of properties on which property tax is paid. Also, I loved in that building too, when my ex-wife was doing her medical internship at the Animal Medical Center.

This was on HN previously, and one stood out to me, there was a single family house (Either New York or Kings county), it had a small yard, the only change was one of the corners was converted from a bathroom to an entrance I think. All else has remained the same.

The freestanding house I grew up in (in Fieldston in the Bronx) looks just like it did when I was a kid. And it looked the same in Google Streetview until the pictures of that neighborhood were pulled (presumably at the request of the neighborhood association).

I looked up my neighborhood and it’s literally the same. In fact, the place where a supermarket used to be is exactly where the supermarket is now.

I guess from a community perspective, the defaults for where to place the town church, market, park are pretty easy to figure out and needs little changing.

Side note:

If someone’s bored, would love to just hold up my phone and see the historical pictures of a building, seems like this api could allow for it.

AR can’t come soon enough.

Wall Street too is wholly recognizable, almost indistinguishable if it weren’t for style of cars and dress.

Governors Island (at least the only photo they have of it) seems to be wildly different to when I visited recently. I don't know the full history of the island, but that seems to be one of the places where it's actually less populated than it was in the past.

Governors Island has a really interesting history! Link for the lazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governors_Island

It's incredible--even some of the finer details like advertisements painted on the sides of buildings seem to be unchanged.

For example, the two bottom banners can still be clearly read on this warehouse between 44rd and 45th on 11th ave: https://i.imgur.com/EXJUMrL.png

I wish this guy looked at the camera:

https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_1_00238_0016#16.2...

There's just so much history here. I hope we don't lose it.

edit:

YES and with a pipe :) https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_1_00020_0001#16.8...

The second photo has a building in the background that looks modern. Neat.

That's 29 Broadway, completed in 1931 by Sloan & Robertson architects, apparently. Some further reading:

http://www.mindfulwalker.com/explore-new-york/the-art-deco-p... https://www.mindfulwalker.com/explore-new-york/a-peek-inside...

Very very neat. Seriously, spend some time randomly clicking on these dots and checking out these pics.

Some themes that stand out (probably influenced by how much time I spend in New York City for work, at least pre-Covid):

- extremely consistent architectural themes. Almost everything is some variation of the same general pattern.

- there's no trash ... anywhere

- very fun going to corners I spent a lot of time at when I was younger, and recognizing these buildings

Could go on, but there's so much to go through. Kudos to those who put this together.

> - there's no trash ... anywhere

There's a purely logistical reason for that. Most stuff you could buy didn't come wrapped in plastic or paper and most people didn't snack as much as we do now. You can't litter what you don't have.

I don't buy it. A banana peel here, an orange peel there and before you know the whole street is full of trash.

Ehh I don't know. It makes sense to me. A banana peel and an orange are biodegradable and back them, at least according to my late grandmother, they actually did use as much as they could of the extra biomass from foods (probably because of the Great Depression). A banana peel on the ground is also a lot less unsightly than a bunch of plastic wrappers or cups from McDonalds, at least in my opinion.

I found my apartment. The building looks identical to its state today, but the neighborhood feels a lot different. The 1940s version is a barren landscape of street, sidewalk, building. Today we have trees taking up most of the sidewalk. It really changes the character of the neighborhood and I didn't appreciate it as much until I saw the "before" picture.

The other thing I noticed was that the diner on the corner used to be a grandiose church. I have no idea who let them tear that down to build apartments. It probably wouldn't happen today.

> I have no idea who let them tear that down to build apartments.

Because you didn't need the government's permission. You just had to give the existing owner enough money to make it yours. Someone bought the church and developed the land.

I will join other commentators in saying that this is super neat.

I am surprised that there's such clear and methodical street-level records of basically every address in such a large area from this point in history.

I shouldn't be so surprised though, it's not like humans were any less intelligent, organised, and resourceful. I guess it's just the sheer effort needed by the teams and the required assets (film, cameras, development, filing, etc) to pull this off. You can see that some blocks were photographed in summer, some in winter, and some in between, so it was clearly a large exercise.

Also, the fact these records still exist and weren't destroyed by accident or oversight over the past 80 years is fortunate.

I wonder if now the photos are digitised with GPS coordinates, given current photo-stitching technology, whether it would be possible to process these and stitch together into a more seamless virtual walkthrough of the streets? Sure there'd be gaps, but it would be cool to be able to put myself at ground level and meander among the streets of days gone by...

> stitch together into a more seamless virtual walkthrough

Presumably changes in perspective would ruin everything—though I don't know if panorama software today does any Blade Runner-ish magic to correct that.

You can sometimes see changes in the perspective on satellite maps, when parts of a building are taken from different fly-bys. Doesn't look too neat.

I love projects like this! Someone, in this case a municipal body, decided that something like this is worthwhile and funded it. Not only funded it but shepherded it to a delightful end product. In the din of CAC and conversion metrics, projects such as this is a breath of fresh air, and joy and wonderment, and renews my hope in tech.

Others have written on how things have mostly remained the same. I love old movies for this reason; Holly Golightly could hail a cab here today, Valentine and Winthorpe could buy a soy dog at the same cart, Mike Corleone could pick up a broadsheet except they don't sell newspapers from carts the way they used to (or do they?) I don't know if Romans see their city the way New Yorkers see theirs, but for me it's NYC that's the Eternal City.

It would be cool for someone to build an interactive app with a slider - slide left and you see the same location as it stands now on Google Maps and slide right and it would show what it used to be

Coolest thing on HN this year.. my elders say THANK YOU!!!

It would be interesting to see if they could stitch any of these images together to make an interactive look around street view.

Pretty cool!

This is the friends apartment

https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_1_00588_0006a#17....

There are so few cars parked on the streets!

Might also be early morning because there's very few people in most shots as well.

This clock above the Chevrolet factory shows 9:30am:

https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_1_01105_0001#16.2...

Does 9:30am qualify as early morning?

Regardless still looks like morning hours on a snowy/winter day in most.

Look at Market Street, San Francisco in 1906: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_1AdYRGW8

Plenty of cars, bikes, and people.

I doubt NYC was much different in 1940 at higher trafficked hours.

That's because it wasn't till the 1950s that this became common: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/17/realestate/streetscapes-c...

A big mistake, in my opinion. If anything good can come of COVID, it's taking back this incredibly expensive real estate that we give out for free. Yes, free. No permits needed.

I have no opinion on the value of permits, but people may misinterpret the meaning of "free" in this context. There is no where in manhattan you can park for free for any duration greater than a day or two:

https://imgur.com/a/dABUl5u

The exception would be police who park wherever they want and taxis that hop from spot to spot.

> There is no where in manhattan you can park for free for any duration greater than a day or two:

Most blocks in NYC have street sweeping twice a week. Some people move their cars to another block the night before. Some sit in their car, move it when the sweeper comes, then put it right back. Both groups are getting permanent parking that costs some amount of time but no money.

Don't forget people with M.D. license plates, construction vehicles, and transit workers. I've had the unfortunate luck assuming all parking was treated the same, tickets have taught me otherwise.

You absolutely can and a large majority of Manhattan car owners do. As another commenter said, you just have to respect alternate-side-parking and cleaning rules. Typically either once or twice a week.

It's such a "New York" thing, that it's a bit of a ritual: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gfCNTRIJsw

Again, this should not exist.

> a bit of a ritual: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gfCNTRIJsw

Huh, actual space between cars? I was told New Yorkers' cars all have scratched and banged bumpers from parking bumper-to-bumper.

Say that to my car parked on the street right now!

Thanks for sharing! I had no idea that people were so reasonable about cars back then.

If you're on mobile, zoom in to see the photos. If you zoom out, or (in my case) the default zoom is too far, you won't see the dots and boops will have no effect.

Waiting for the late 1970's/early 1980's tax photos.

Some more info about the NYC tax photos: https://www.archives.nyc/blog/tag/Tax+Photos

I remember a gallery from the 70s or early 80s being posted on Reddit, but it might've been some photographer's endeavor or a survey of just one borough—because it was mostly rather run-down parts.

I recall looking up a picture of the apartment building I live in in this same photo set, but from (I think) the official NYC source. It was a clunky, multi-step process. I'm glad somebody made a really easy way to do it quick.

Really fascinating looking at the block my office building is on and it looking nearly identical to today. Its an interesting thought that people have had a similar experience walking down that block for the past 70-80 years.

80s.nyc has a somewhat similar street view using archival images from the 80s

awesome, and yet the 1940s images are vastly better

Any time I see a large set of images around a common theme by first thought is "I want to see what happens if you train a GAN on this".

Anyone else? Anyone fancy trying it?

Outstanding website, very cool way to take look back in time.

The book “How Buildings Learn” by Stewart Brand used the approach to showing buildings over time and talked about how they were adapted to the needs of people.

New York seems like it's turned into a caricature of itself. Think it's worth living there after you've had your year or two of fun?

The ones in Central Park don't seem to match, dot in center of the park looks like a normal street.

The guys in the photos, they're all gangsters, I tell ya an they all sound like Jimmy Cagney.

Any ideas how I could make one of these for my city as well? Thanks!

I was able to find my grandparents and great-grandparents house.

I expected to see a lot more people. The streets look deserted.

Do you why?

Exposure time?

They also look pretty clean and free of rubbish.

Very cool!

outstanding website

beautiful view!

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