Monday, November 8, 2010

An Avenue A now and then

Well, we continue to look through through the New York Public Library photo archives... EV Grieve reader Lambert Jack sent along these shots...

Avenue A between Sixth Street and Seventh Street from 1937...



...and today...



For more on the old Hollywood Theater, check out this post.

And facing south on Avenue A at Sixth Street from 1941...



....and today...



Previously on EV Grieve:
A little bit of Hollywood on Avenue A

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

the library site is addictive, isn't it? The before and after shots are really depressing. Beauty replaced by banality. Great.

Mykola ( Mick) Dementiuk said...

I have never seen that picture of what stood there before Con Ed took over. How fascinating, what a loss...

Melanie said...

Cool shots--seems they raised a whole block for the Con Ed power station. Lowes Hollywood sounds intriguing.

Bowery Boogie said...

crazy how little the old theater has changed through the years.

blue glass said...

that movie theater was there in the 60s, as was one on st. marks and second avenue (before it was the filmore) and saint marks 1-2 aves (not gangster museum), and there were three on east 14th street two btween 34d & 4th and one (a porno movie) 2-3 aves, and also the little one on third
avenue next to the little "church" around 13th street (inhabited by drunks and pervs that could sleep and stay all day).
third avenue had an el if we want to back.
thanks for the old pictures

Anonymous said...

Someone should add these to http://www.sepiatown.com. There arent that many pics from our hood there.

NYCETC said...

LOVE THESE! Thanks for posting them.

~evilsugar25 said...

agree with everyone - thanks for posting. i can't get enough of the old pix.

~evilsugar25 said...

on a separate note: why is the interface for the digital archives so clunky? the browsing is arduous at best! zoom/pan? really? so microfiche.

pinhead said...

Grieve - I got so tired of wasting time on NYPL, I decided to be productive and launched a blog. I don't have your dedication and expect I'll lose interest quickly, but in the meantime your comments are welcome.

~evilsugar25 said...

@pinhead: oooo blog looks really interesting/promising. don't lose steam, i'm looking forward to wasting lots of time on it. :)

EV Grieve said...

@Pinhead

I thought you were kidding at first! Looks great! Love it... though I do have EV trademarked! (heh)

Joe Jusko said...

The theater was a Pioneer supermarket when I was a kid. my older brother worked there and told me about the hidden theater screen and such. Really cool to see these!

Jill said...

WOW that is arguably, so far, the best find on the NYPL site. That building now makes so much more sense. I saw the door open up there the other day. If I had any guts I would have tried to jump up that tantalizing fire escape to see inside.