Since Six Apart is suffering through a denial of service attack I thought I'd do something different today.
The Library of Congress announced a couple of days ago that the George Grantham Bain Collection of news photographs has been digitized and made available to the public. The collection consists of 40,000 negatives, mostly from the 1900s to 1920s but some are from as early as the 1860s and as late as the 1930s. Photos are of newsworthy items such as crime, strikes, disasters, sports, theater, and politics. The photos are from all over but there is an emphasis on New York City.
The photo at top is taken from the Woolworth Building. City Hall is partly hidden by the elaborate tower. The Woolworth Building is the building with the round copper top at the lower-left of the more recent Google Maps image.
Notice how "then" lots of people milling through the park all around the buildings. Now much of the park nearest the buildings are fenced off from public access for security purposes. Always annoys me when I'm wandering across the park from 250 Broadway and I have to take a circuitous route...
Posted by: Scott T. | 03 May 2006 at 08:30 AM
Great post Joe. It looks like the building east of the Tweet Courthouse has been demolished (and is now more parkland), and the building at the northwest corner of Chambers and Elk has been demolished as well (and is now a parking lot). Each demolition eats away at a little piece of the city.
Posted by: AD | 05 May 2006 at 01:33 PM
Whoops. Of course that should be Tweed Courthouse.
Posted by: AD | 05 May 2006 at 01:33 PM
Tweet Courthouse has a nice ring to it. I just noticed that lower Broadway once had a trolley line.
Posted by: Joe | 06 May 2006 at 06:01 PM