The picture above, from the New York State archive, is labelled “New York City, 98th Street”. It seems more like Brooklyn than Manhattan because of the lack of bigger apartment houses interrupting the lines of the almost-rowhouse-sized walk-up apartments. Besides the title, there are two ways to identify the exact location: the elevated train running over …
The oldest monument in a New York park is the statue of George Washington in Union Square, erected in 1856. The subject and the form (an equestrian statue) are not very surprising. The second oldest, erected the following year, is more satisfyingly obscure: the General William Jenkins Worth Monument across the street form Madison Square. …
The picture of a lock above, from the New York State archive, is titled “The opening of the first section of the Erie Canal” and is dated May 15, 1915. My memories of first learning US history in elementary school are pretty hazy, but the canal opened in 1825 and contributed greatly to New York …
This picture from Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York Project, “El, Sixth Avenue Line, 28th Street Station” doesn’t have any single big topic, but it has a bunch of small ones, all a little interesting. The el began in 1878 as a railroad pulled by coal-burning steam locomotives. It was converted to electric service in 1903 …
This is the third picture Berenice Abbott took from the roof of the Irving Trust Building in 1938, literally in-between the pictures I posted yesterday and Monday. Monday’s looked east, Tuesday’s looked south, and today’s looks southeast, past the curving line of Broad Street to the oldest part of the port of New York along …
