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Street View of 1940s New York
- dwg 6y agoI expected to see a lot more people. The streets look deserted.
- tekkiweb 6y agobeautiful view!
- shawnk 6y agoCoolest thing on HN this year.. my elders say THANK YOU!!!
- dylan604 6y agoIt would be interesting to see if they could stitch any of these images together to make an interactive look around street view.
- remarkEon 6y agoVery 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.
- titzer 6y ago> - 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.
- felipemnoa 6y agoI don't buy it. A banana peel here, an orange peel there and before you know the whole street is full of trash.
- remarkEon 6y agoEhh 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.
- neom 6y agoWhat'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.
- bosswipe 6y agoIt 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.
- neom 6y agoProperty 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.
- ithkuil 6y agoIs "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
- 6y ago
- roody15 6y agooutstanding website
- roody15 6y agoOutstanding website, very cool way to take look back in time.
- rtlfe 6y agoThere are so few cars parked on the streets!
- dmix 6y agoMight 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#16.2/40.768493/-73.989602 https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_1_01105_0001#16.2...
- dylan604 6y agoDoes 9:30am qualify as early morning?
- dmix 6y agoRegardless 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 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.
- silviogutierrez 6y agoThat's because it wasn't till the 1950s that this became common: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/17/realestate/streetscapes-cars-when-streets-were-vehicles-for-traffic-not-parking.html 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.
- nogridbag 6y agoI 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 https://imgur.com/a/dABUl5u The exception would be police who park wherever they want and taxis that hop from spot to spot.
- yawnr 6y agoVery cool!
- coding123 6y agoI wish this guy looked at the camera: https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_1_00238_0016#16.21/40.717377/-73.991694 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#16.81/40.706848/-74.011534 https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_1_00020_0001#16.8...
- pgrote 6y agoThe second photo has a building in the background that looks modern. Neat.
- string 6y agoThat's 29 Broadway, completed in 1931 by Sloan & Robertson architects, apparently. Some further reading: http://www.mindfulwalker.com/explore-new-york/the-art-deco-pleasures-of-29-broadway http://www.mindfulwalker.com/explore-new-york/the-art-deco-p... https://www.mindfulwalker.com/explore-new-york/a-peek-inside-dazzling-29-broadway https://www.mindfulwalker.com/explore-new-york/a-peek-inside...
- occams_chainsaw 6y agoIf 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.
- joshlemer 6y agoAny ideas how I could make one of these for my city as well? Thanks!
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoI was able to find my grandparents and great-grandparents house.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Doubl 6y agoThe guys in the photos, they're all gangsters, I tell ya an they all sound like Jimmy Cagney.
- hunter-2 6y agoIt 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
- parksy 6y agoI 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...
- aasasd 6y ago> 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.
- codeledger 6y agoWaiting 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 https://www.archives.nyc/blog/tag/Tax+Photos
- aasasd 6y agoI 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.
- speps 6y agoThe ones in Central Park don't seem to match, dot in center of the park looks like a normal street.
- bartligthart 6y agoPretty cool! This is the friends apartment https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_1_00588_0006a#17.5/40.732283/-74.005241 https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_1_00588_0006a#17....
- jrockway 6y agoI 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.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago> 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.
- TruffleLabs 6y agoThe 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.
- andybak 6y agoAny 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?
- agentq 6y ago80s.nyc has a somewhat similar street view using archival images from the 80s
- zild3d 6y agoawesome, and yet the 1940s images are vastly better
- throw51319 6y agoNew 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?
- milquetoastaf 6y agoNo. go away
- devchix 6y agoI 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.
- bootlooped 6y agoI 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.
- cpascal 6y agoReally 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.