An aerial view from March 1940. We’re flying over the Hudson, looking south and a bit east. The East River is visible on the other side of lower Manhattan, downtown Brooklyn is just past the tip of the Woolworth Building, and then miles and miles of houses until you get to Jamaica Bay way off …
I used to spend a lot of time worrying about getting the right shot. I was using a relatively bulky film camera, with 36 shots on a roll of film and almost always no more than two rolls of film with me. Every shot had to count, or at least I had to try to …
Another of Johnston’s 1894 views: “The Bowery, N.Y.” The Third Avenue elevated was 16 years old, so new but not that new, and still operated by steam train; the street cars are cable cars, not yet electrified. To us, it all looks old, but from the perspective of someone in 1894, the elevated steam trains …
There’s a small collection at the Library of Congress with the title “View of New York in 1894 (?)”. (The question mark is part of the collection title. The date 1894 is written directly on the photos but I guess there’s not enough other evidence.) The photos were taken by John S. Johnston and are …
When you look at a picture of midtown Manhattan today, the tall buildings – for the sake of discussion, let’s set a lower bound at 30 stories – are so common that they blur together. That’s a post-1960 phenomenon, and they used to be limited to a smaller area and have more space between them. …
