When I come across an old photo of Manhattan that I haven’t seen before, I have fun for a few minutes working out where it was taken from and what it shows. It’s a mental game both broader-based (in terms of knowledge) and more focussed (in terms of scope) than, say, working on a crossword.
The picture above is a nice mid-range shot of the Brooklyn Bridge from lower Manhattan and, given the angle, has to be looking northeast from the southern tip of the island. In other words, if the bridge spans east-west between Manhattan to the west and Brooklyn to the east, and we’re in Manhattan, and we see Brooklyn on the right, we have to be looking northish; since we’re inland of the East River, we have to be looking eastish. For ease of naming, I’m going to follow the NYC convention and pretend that the main axis of Manhattan is due north-south. The photo is tagged as between 1880 and 1897, which is so broad as to be useless. The fact that the bridge is compete is enough to tell us that this is 1883 or later.
For this particular photo, the fun comes with identifying the buildings we’re seeing (some from odd angles) and the date. The easiest, by far, is the building with the cylindrical tower and conical tower roof: that’s the old Cotton Exchange. That makes the street just to the left of that building, roughly parallel to our line of sight, Beaver Street: the Cotton Exchange was at Beaver and William Streets, and Beaver runs on a southwest-northeast diagonal. Beaver’s southwest end is at Bowling Green, at the foot of Broadway, which makes the building in the lower right the Produce Exchange at 2 Broadway. (Both exchanges were designed by George Post, who is unavoidable when discussing big buildings in nineteenth-century New York.) The Produce Exchange was a rectangle with a long narrow light court in the middle, visible here, that extended down to the second floor. The light-court walls were among the earliest in New York to be fully supported (at the court base) by steel beams and columns.
We’re standing on the roof of the Washington Building at One Broadway. The building in the left foreground, with a three-story mansard roof facing the street and a light-colored side wall is the Beaver Street wing of the Welles Building, with the main wing facing Broadway to its left. The light-colored building to the left of the Cotton Exchange, with arches at the top floor, is the Farmers Trust bank. That was constructed in 1890, so we’re getting closer to a date. To really narrow it down, I’d have to start looking to see what buildings are not there. For example, we would not have a clear view of Farmers Trust if the Corn Exchange Building of 1894 was present, so that provides a latest-possible date.
I highly recommend this game using old pictures of wherever you live.
