That 40s show: Get lost in the NYC Municipal Archives's online collection

The New York City Municipal Archives delivered an early holiday gift this month after putting their 1940s tax photo collection online. (Previously these were only available to view in person via microfilm.)

You can browse for yourself — there are 720,000 digitized photos! — at this link. High-resolution versions of these tax photos — print or digital — are available to purchase online.

Anyway, I spent every waking free moment in recent days a few hours getting lost in the archives. I posted a few photos here from this neighborhood, picking addresses that (mostly) will look familiar to you today. The top photo is from 14th Street and Fourth Avenue (now the Zeckendorf Towers, completed 47 years after this shot).

Here we go (in no particular order):

The Con Ed power plant on 14th Street and Avenue C...



The Church of the Immaculate Conception on 14th Street at First Avenue...



The Tompkins Square Library branch on 10th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B...



McSorley's on Seventh Street...



East Houston looking southwest at Norfolk and Essex (P.S. 20 the Anna Silver School is on that corner now)...



Astor Place (where Starbucks is now in the retail space)...



Looking toward Stuyvesant Street and 10th Street from Second Avenue...



The southwest corner of Seventh Street and Avenue B... (where 7B/the Horseshoe Bar/Vazac's is)...



The Christodora House on Avenue B at Ninth Street...



St. Brigid's on Avenue B at Eighth Street...



66 Avenue A between Fourth Street and Fifth Street (where Ink on A, Alphabets, Mast, Lancelotti Housewares, etc., are today) ...



313-315 Bowery (315 would become CBGB ... then John Varvatos ... the Palace Hotel was around until 1993, when the Bowery Residents Coalition signed a lease for the upstairs space)...



224-226 Avenue B between 13th Street and 14th Street (Mona's is in one of those spaces now)...



125 E. Seventh St. at Avenue A (currently Miss Lily's 7A Cafe in the retail space)...



106 Avenue C at Seventh Street...



28-30 Second Ave. at Second Street (now the Anthology Film Archives and Manhattan Mini-Storage)...



... and one spot that's not entirely recognizable today — 25 Cooper Square (now the Standard East Village)

71 years ago today

[Click on image for more detail]

An EVG reader found the above aerial photo in the digital section of the New York State Archive. The photo is dated Feb. 27, 1947.

The photo, looking toward the (north-ish) east, shows the new Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village. (Stuy Town would welcome its first residents on Aug. 1, 1947.)

Meanwhile, among the other familiar sites — the Con Ed building on 14th Street and St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery... just follow the helpful arrows...

When there was a bank building in the middle of East Houston at Avenue A

EVG reader Steph Romeo was watching "The Naked City" from 1948 when she spotted this...



...and a view from East Houston near Norfolk looking west to Essex and Avenue A... a thin building in what is now the middle of East Houston...



On the left, you can spot the Provident Loan Society Building, which is still there today (not for long, though) on the southwest corner of Houston and Essex...



Steph look further, and found this image from the comprehensive digital collections at the NYPL... here's a shot of the building's front entrance circa 1929 ... showing the Community State Bank (not another bank branch!) and a dental office in the address that is listed as 2-4 Avenue A aka 240 1/2 E. Houston. ...


[Via NYPL]

I didn't have a chance to do any further research to find out when the building was razed ... it's also a good reminder to rewatch "The Naked City" and the subsequent TV series inspired by the film, which has many Lower East Side locations. I've haven't watched any of that in more than 10 years.

Snow break, archival edition

Snowy NYC as a magical wonderland: 1950s photo of the San Carlo Restaurant at 3rd Ave & 10th St by Saul Leiter @evgrieve pic.twitter.com/EgSWs6Sanw

— Ephemeral New York (@EphemeralNY) January 7, 2017

A photo from the archives of longtime East Village resident Saul Leiter, who died in 2013.

Thanks to Ephemeral New York for sharing!

Repost: The Ninth Street Bread N Cake Bakery was great until they applied for a liquor license

Digging into the archives here with this post from Nov. 5, 2010...

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Thanks to Goggla's comment the other day, we've all been spending far too much time looking at photos from the New York Public Library archives ... EV Grieve reader Pinhead came across this shot..

It's taken from the old Cooper Union building, looking at Stuyvesant Street to the east toward St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, 1856.


As Pinhead says: "Be sure to zoom the amazing detail, like the Ninth Street Bread N Cake Bakery at 172 E 9th (an address that doesn't exist anymore because of the NYU dorm)."

A step back in time on the Bowery

The Subway (sandwich shop) closed on the Bowery at the end of June. The storefront at 342 Bowery between Great Jones and Bond is currently for rent.

While recently researching 342 Bowery, Jeff Klepper, who was born and raised in Manhattan and now lives in Boston, came across our Subway closing post.

He shared the following photo with us... of his great-grandfather, Aaron Klepper, in front of his diamonds and jewelry shop at 342 Bowery just about 100 years ago ...


[Photo courtesy of Jeff Klepper]

We asked Jeff for a few more details, such as if his great-grandfather and family lived in the apartment above the shop.

Aaron's daughter, my great-aunt Sue, talked about living "behind the store" in one large room, in which her father had built some partitions. There was no heat, except for a kerosene stove, and the toilet was outside in back. But I think she was referring to their tenement on Allen Street.

I'm guessing they moved to the Bowery around 1905, and probably lived in an apartment above the store, because she said that her father would "go upstairs" to sleep when he was ill.

Jeff said that this photo had been hanging in his house for years, but he never knew the street until one of his cousins figured it out based on the 1920 census records.

Maybe this is the oldest footage of New York City that you've ever seen

Thanks to an EVG reader for sending along the link to this video making the rounds... Here's the description via YouTube:

Oldest and most incredible footage of New York City ever, including where the WTC would be built. With added maps carefully researched to show where the camera was. 28 shots of classic footage with a new twist and a new soundtrack.

Valuable lots to be sold in the neighborhood — in 1836

[Click on image for more details]

Something from the Museum of the City of New York.

Here's the description:

Valuable Lots to be Sold by Jas. Bleecker & Sons on Thursday 19th of May 1836

Map of area from 6th to 8th Streets betwen 1st and 4th Avenue.

Missing from the description: There goes the neighborhood!

Check out more from the Museum's collection right here ... and all available for purchase.

Let's pay a visit to the 'Mighty Manhattan' of 1949

[On the Bowery in 1949]

Here's a short film titled "Mighty Manhattan, New York's Wonder City" from 1949 that is making the rounds again.

According to IMDB:

The film visits many of the neighborhoods and landmarks on Manhattan Island and occasionally includes a history lesson. The neighborhoods include the Bowery, Chinatown, Herald Square, and Times Square. Some of the architectural highlights are the Empire State Building, the New York Public Library, Temple Emanuel, the Central Park Zoo, and the Rockefeller Center complex.

It's a 20-minute film, though this version cuts off before the 16-minute mark. There's a visit to the Bowery at the 3:38 point ... which the narrator calls "a sad reflection on the best-laid plans of the city founders."



H/T @TBconfid

A drive by Mousey's Bar on Avenue C in 1976

George Cohen shares another photo with us.

I took this from the taxi I was driving. I saw Mousey's Bar, a little island in a pile of rubble, i.e. Avenue C and 13th St. in 1976.

As I raised my camera to my eye, this guy comes to the door, sees me and grabs his crotch.

That was the shot.

Indeed.

Today, Campos Plaza stands at this location.

As for Mousey's ... according to Jimmy Peanuts, Mousey's had the best stickball team of any bar in the neighborhood.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Meanwhile on St. Mark's Place in 1968…. (22 comments)

An NYC now and then

Here's a photo compilation by Cora Drimus that compares "old and present-day New York City."

The current photos that Cora used here are from April.

Find more details about this project at YouTube.

Meanwhile on St. Mark's Place in 1968….

[Click on image to enlarge]

Here's a photo that EVG reader George Cohen took in 1968 "of the hippie scene on St. Mark's Place between Third and Second Avenues, looking east."

How did these people survive without $1 pizza along that corridor?

And that concludes 'Dirty Old New York'

In the past two years, Jonathan Hertzberg has mashed-up movie clips from the 1960s-1980s for a series titled "Dirty Old New York, aka Fun City."

He just released No. 5, the last installment of his series. You can watch it right here. (FYI — there are a few boob shots, just maybe a little NSFW.)

Check out Jonathan's blog for the complete list of all the movies he featured in this video.

Jeremiah talked with Hertzberg last August. You can read that here.

You can find the "Dirty Old New York" parts 1-4 right here.

100 years before 7A, there was L.W. Schwenk

[EVG file photo]

7A is now closed on the southwest corner of Avenue A and East Seventh Street… the restaurant, which opened in the mid 1980s (anyone have the exact date? We've heard several different years), ended service as of yesterday.

Meanwhile, almost 100 years ago, the address was home to L.W. Schwenk… and here's a photo dated July 24, 1914, titled "Depositors at failed bank."



Wow. Seems like 100 years ago! (Ugh, sorry, that was bad.) But to think in better times some of the people in this crowd went to McSorley's ... or Katz's ... or Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery... or Veniero's ... or DeRobertis Caffe... or John's of 12th Street ... or...

The nexus of the universe in 1975

Here's a photo by Dean Lapinel that Dirty Old 1970's New York City posted on Facebook yesterday…

From East First Street at First Avenue, facing northeast, circa 1975. On the corner now is Juicy Lucy and Golden Cadillac (and Boca Chica before)… Now who's up for some bocci?

A look back at 1941, when 98 Avenue A was a movie theater

So we've been monitoring the progress at the former 98-100 Avenue A, most recently East Village Farms. As you know, developer Ben Shaoul is building a new 8-story retail-residental complex with a roof deck.



[2009]

As we've previously pointed out, the address opened as the Avenue A Theatre in 1926 … and remained a theater until 1959.

On Monday, Off the Grid, the blog of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, published two photos when the building was operating as a theater… here's Avenue A between East Seventh Street and East Sixth Street in 1941...





Meanwhile, EVG reader Trevor Ristow recently shared some photos of the old theater that he took before crews started to demolish the building…











There's not much of the building left today. At last look, the interior was completely gutted… basically down to four walls…

Here are more photos that we've published of the interior … here … and here.

[1941 images via the NYPL digital archives]

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

East Village Farms is closing; renovations coming to 100 Avenue A

Inside the abandoned theater at East Village Farms on Avenue A

Reader reports: Village Farms closing Jan. 31; building will be demolished

Asbestos abatement continues at 98 Avenue A, Ben Shaoul's latest East Village trophy

Ben Shaoul's proposed new Avenue A building will be 8 stories with a roof deck

Late-afternoon 1936 break

Here we are looking south on First Avenue from the East 14th Street El Station circa 1936 ... via EVG Facebook friend Michael Paul

It was actually the IRT Second Avenue Line ... From Houston Street, the line went north on First Avenue, where it turned left on 23rd Street ... and ran north on Second Avenue to 129th Street, per Wikipedia.



Per Wikipedia Commons: "The Second Avenue El, looking south on First Avenue from 13th Street during its demolition in September 1942."

Fares from the past: Take a cab up 1st Avenue in the East Village of 1971

We posted this archival video titled "NYC Taxi Ride up 1st Ave circa 1971" back in February 2011. Dirty Old 1970's New York City posted it on Facebook this morning... so we thought we'd revisit it as well... the ride starts just past East Houston Street north to East 14th Street. What do you recognize?

5 pretty amazing photos of Tompkins Square Park in 1904

Thank you to esquared™ for pointing out these photos of Tompkins Square Park from the Museum of the City of New York... these photos date to 1904, and are from an "Arbor Day" celebration in the Park ...











Can we get that overhead seesaw thing back?

And head on over to the Museum's website for more photos... they are available for purchase as well as gawking...