The official title of that picture is “New York skyline from Manhattan Bridge” and that is what it shows. We’re looking south and west from the bridge, past Chinatown to the Financial District skyscrapers. (The pyramid on the left is Bankers Trust, heading to the right from there are the Equitable Building, the Singer Building, the City Investing Building, Woolworth, and the Municipal Building.)
The description of the picture gives its date no more precisely than 1910 to 1920, based on the visible famous buildings, but there’s one other thing we know: it was taken in late spring, summer, or early fall, with summer most likely. New York summers are not excessively hot on average but the average lies. We have brutal waves of heat and humidity followed by periods of cooler weather. The tip-off is not that some men appear to be wearing straw hats, but rather comes from looking at the pedestrians on the foreground street running almost vertically up the frame, toward the Singer Building. The sidewalk in the shade is crowded with vendors and pedestrians; the opposite sidewalk, in the sun, is far less used. Before air conditioning, people knew better than to spend time in the sun walking on the street.
And with that thought, Memorial Day is here, and with it, the start of summer.
