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The simplicity of the name of the site Old Pictures belies the breadth and depth of the historical content it provides. Inside, there is a collection of more than 80,000 images dating from 1850 to 1940. The site's database is searchable, but designed for easy and lengthy browsing. Groups of photographs are also assembled in collections based on themes and defining moments, ranging from photos of the U.S. Civil War (warning: contains graphic photos of battlefield casualties) to British Imperialism around the world. We, of course, searched for photos of New York City and found a trove of images that really don't date from that long ago (most date 100 years ago or less), but shows a city that is unrecognizable in some images and just as familiar in others. We browsed through Old Pictures for some time and picked out some shots that we think are representative of what the site holds for visitors interested in real portraits of New York City's past.
- What looks like Riverside Park while looking north, with New Jersey and the Hudson to the left
- FDNY removes a body from the rubble of a 7th Ave. subway cavein in 1915
- Aftermath of the anarchist-attributed bombing on Wall St. in front of the J.P. Morgan headquarters in 1920
- Snow removal, 1908-style
- Penn Station under construction - 1909
- Manhattan's Madison Square in 1913
- At the funeral of Tammany boss Big Tim Sullivan in the Bowery
- Anti-war gathering in Union Square - 1914
- Stuyvesant High School students at work
- The
originalsecond incarnation of the Tombs jail downtown
- The Battery battered in a 1910 storm
- A holdout mansion surrounded by newer apartment bldgs
- Football practice at Columbia University -1916
The NYCTV program "Inside the Archives" features a weekly hour of archival New York images set to music. A collection of photographer Bernice Abbot's mostly architectural photography of the city from 1935-38 called "Changing New York" is viewable at the New York Public Library's site. And the library also hosts a series of photos by Lewis Wickes Hines of the Empire State Building's construction in 1930-31. NYC Then and Now is an interesting pool of photos at flickr that documents alterations––sometimes small, sometimes dramatic––in streetscapes around the city.
(Photo of a Mock Battleship being built in Union Square as part of a WWI recruiting effort. Germania Life building looms ironically in the background. From Old Pictures.)
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Interesting to see the photos with crowds for rallies or funerals or whatever. That kind of behavior is illegal now, and will get you several days in jail.
One consequence of the anti-German sentiment during World War I is that Germania Life's management changed the company name to Guardian Life. It may have been just a short time after the above picture was taken.
Same war, same park: the picture of the mock battleship for recruiting purposes and the anti-war protest both show Union Square.
Thanks for pointing out this website, my productivity is going to be non-existent this afternoon. :)
That looks like Mott Street looking south, not Bowery.
So that is the Tombs where Bartleby died. What a great resource. Thanks
OK, I'll admit it, I'm a total Inside the Archives nerd. My wife makes fun of me, my daughter makes fun of me, I don't care. Give me more pictures of Penn Station and the Third Avenue El and the FDR under construction!
Bob is right. The picture of funeral of Tammany boss Big Tim Sullivan on the Bowery looks more like a southwest perspective from Mott toward the intersection of Mott and Prince. The street looks to narrow to be Bowery and the brick wall looks like the wall around Old St. Patrick's.
[5] I'm afraid I miswrote when I said it was the original Tombs. The one mentioned by Melville was the original and modeled after an Egyption mausoleum. It occupied the same real estate as the one pictured (built in 1902), but was a much shorter, less-imposing and more-classical-looking building. Sorry for the confusion.
"The yard was entirely quiet. It was not accessible to the common prisoners. The surrounding walls, of amazing thickness, kept off all sounds behind them. The Egyptian character of the masonry weighed upon me with its gloom. But a soft imprisoned turf grew under foot. The heart of the eternal pyramids, it seemed, wherein, by some strange magic, through the clefts, grass-seed, dropped by birds, had sprung."
-Bartelby, the Scrivener, 1853
The reference to the Bowery was strictly gleaned from the title and caption at Old Pictures, which are "Sullivan funeral bowery". They probably were referring to the Bowery as the wider surrounding neighborhood, in which case I should have used the word "in" instead of "on". I'll make the change. Thanks.
One of the things I love about the site is that you can stare at a picture for minutes trying to pry visual and architectural cues from the past to determine a location.
that image with the mansion... where exactly is that? interesting picture, kind of sad we lost some of those homes, must have been really beautiful.... and now we have those "lovely" white 50s/60s coops.
that mansion is the Schwab house (Riverside and 73-74) -- was replaced by an apt building of same name in 1951.
The other "mystery" view of Riverside drive is the 70's and 80' -- you can see the large front lawn of the Schwab house at very bottom right of photo.
Tim N. I am more of an inside the archives nerd than you, since I have the soundtrack!
And I was the one who came up with the NYC Then and Now flickr group.
The mansion is the Schwab mansion that occupied the entire block between 73rd and 74th Streets from Riverside Drive to West End Ave. The picture is taken looking NE from RSD toward WEA & 74th Street.
The mansion (called "Riverside") was replaced by an egregious post-war building called either Schwab House or Eleven Riverside Drive which occupies the entire block. It's only architectural distinction is that it is red rather than white brick.
The mansion is the Schwab mansion called "Riverside" which occupied the entire block from 73rd to 74th Streets between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue. The photo is taken from above Riverside Park looking northeast from 73rd and RSD.
The mansion was replaced by and enormous block-filling postwar brick building alternately called Schwab House and Eleven Riverside Drive whose only architectural distinction is that the brick is red rather than white.
what a shame... now we complain about tearing down the domino sugar factory... meanwhile we lost something like that.
Toby: Okay, you win.
However, thanks for the ammo the next time I get my chops dragged over the coals ("at least I don't have the soundtrack... yet!")
BTW, you got a URL for that flickr group?
And that's absolutely Old St Pat's in the Sullivan funeral picture. Where else would the Tammany sachem have his funeral?
But where do these guys get off claiming to have copyright on the pictures? These are old pictures mostly published before 1923, which by law makes them public domain. You can't copyright public domain works.
Brightliner, I doubt you're a lawyer. Copyrights can last for 150 years. They probably don't have the copyright, though.
The URL for the flickr group is in the article above.
The URL for the flickr group is in the article.
WOAH, this is one of the coolest things I have seen on gothamist (which is saying a lot) -- thank you!!
For anyone interested in more of the history of the Schwab house, I found the following at cityrealty.com:
The site had formerly been occupied by the New York Orphan Asylum and had been purchased by financier Jacob Schiff. According to Peter Salwen, Schiff's wife worried that "would never see her fashionable friends again if she had to live on the Drive" and reluctantly Schiff sold the property to Schwab, who was an associate of Andrew Carnegie's in running United States Steel.
In his book, "Upper West Side Story, A History And A Guide," (Abbeville Press, 1989), the cream-colored granite structure had 116-foot-high pinnacles and was impressive enough to lead Carnegie, who had recently built his own mansion on Fifth Avenue and 91st Street that is now the home of the National Museum of Design, to ask a friend, "Have you seen that place of Charley's...,It makes mine look like a shack."
When he died in 1939, Schwab bequeathed his magnificent house set in lush gardens behind handsome fences to the city for the mayor's residence, but, Salwen recounts, "a proletarian Mayor LaGuardia indignantly rejected it" 'What me in that?'" (In 1943, the Mayor moved into Gracie Mansion in Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side.)
Riverside was torn down in 1948, less than ten years after Schwab's death, to no protest. It was replaced with a 17-story nondescript apartment bldg.
I guess I am the nerd for not reading to the end of the article. But great site!!! Sadly, I remember when alot of those places (Columbus Circle, downtown) looked like that.
[19], I doubt you're a lawyer, too. Or are you saying that Cornell doesn't know what it's talking about?
www.copyright.cornell.edu/training/Hirtle_Public_Domain.htm
It's not even "probably" don't have the copyright. They specifically mention, among other sources, public institutions for their pictures, all of which they claim copyrights on. You cannot take somebody else's work, make some minor adjustments at best and claim copyright. If it's already copyrighted, that's infringement. If it's not, you can't copyright public domain materials.