From the NYPL Digital Collections...
P. L. Sperr took this photo, dated Aug. 31, 1928, from Fourth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B ... looking toward the north at the back of the tenements of Fifth Street.
Per the description: "Buildings shown across the horizon, are the Consolidated Gas Co., the Metropolitan Life Insurance and the N.Y. Life Insurance Co."
2 comments:
I love this!
My grandparents were children during this period. NYC must have been magical then.
Haunting. That era was shrouded in smoke and grime and the old tenements had a ragged quality with the laundry lines strung everywhere and windows flung wide open, since no one had an air conditioner, and you were lucky to have an electric fan. My Grandparents lived above a Woolworth’s in the Bronx and loved that era. It’s one reason why The Alienist was such a great miniseries to watch — it captured the grittiness of The Bowery, the elegance of Stuyvesant and Madison Square, and the raw bustle of New York street life at the turn of the century as well as any movie I’ve ever seen.
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