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.

An Avenue B and East 14th Street now and then

Ace photographer East Village Hawkeye shared these now-and-then photos with us... showing the southwest corner of 14th Street and Avenue B today...



...and in 1914...


[NYPL Digital Gallery]

What do you think? I like the looks of the 14th Street Cafe ... (Click on the image for a better look...) Maybe pick up a pack of Piedmonts and a copy of the New York Herald...

An Avenue D now and then; aerial view of the Lower East Side circa the 1930s

A rather random now and then... happened to spot it at the La Guardia and Wagner Archives on Flickr ... this now-and-then shot shows the northwest corner of Avenue D and East Ninth Street in 1947 and 2010...

And, as a Thursday bonus...

Per the La Guardia and Wagner Archives:

From the Bowery stop on the elevated, an aerial view straight along East Broadway, under the Manhattan Bridge approach, past The Jewish Daily Forward building (at center, rear) toward the Williamsburg Bridge in the distance, 1930s.

Find more from their extensive archives here.

A Second Avenue and East 12th Street now and then

Here's a good one from our friends at NYC Corners... Second Avenue and East 12th Street... in 1930 as The Yiddish Art Theater ... and today as the Village East Cinema...

Find more corners here.

A Bowery and East First Street now and then

Our new friends over at NYC Corners launched their site last month... Per their description:

Whenever possible, we will show side-by-side photos of a particular street corner taken years or decades apart... and that's when the real magic happens.

And here's one of particular interest: the southeast corner of East First Street and the Bowery circa 1942 and today...

Wonder if Blue & Cream will start selling expensive photos of Al's Barber Shop?

A St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue now and then

Speaking of St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue... Why not do an now and then of the northwest corner... These photos are from Off the Grid, the blog of the Greenwich Village Society of Historical Preservation...

First, a mansion that was once on the corner circa 1903...

... and sorta today... (yes, the coffee place changed names...but still...)

Off the Grid has more on this corner here.

An Eighth Street now and then

EV Grieve reader Steve Carter passed along this shot from East Eighth Street near Avenue C (roughly early 1990s)...

...and we attempted to line it for for a now-and-then...

From 1983-1985, the address was home to the performance space 8BC...

[Via Ephemeral New York]

A random now and then: 11th Street and Avenue B

1975!

Today!

[Top photo via Getty]

I had to blow up the 1975 photo a bit... it looks grainy... here's the original...

Today in now and thens: Southeast Corner of Fourth Street and the Bowery

1932...


1970s...



Now...



For more about this corner, go right here.

Top photo by Charles Von Buren via The Museum of the City of New York

Middle photo via the Phebe's website.

A corner that has remained nearly the same

And so we continue with another now and then shot...

Avenue B at 14th Street, East side to Southeast, dated Oct. 23, 1939, via the NYPL Digital Archives...



... and a few weeks back... almost lined up...



Updated: OOPS. Apologies... I forgot that Jeremiah Moss did this very same post back in October... I even commented on it!

An intersection that hasn't really remained nearly the same

Well, this one isn't exactly the perfect now and then... close enough... First, the south end of Cooper Square looking south on Bowery from 1900....



... and a shot from this past spring...



I recognize a few things, I think... You?

1900 photo by Robert L. Bracklow
From the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York

13th and B, 71 years apart

Well, thanks to Pinhead, we've been spending more and more time at the NYPL Digital Library site...

So, here's a photo of Avenue B at 13th Street looking to the northeast from March 1939....



...and close enough from today... just the ConEd stacks let you know that you're looking at the same corner...



Speaking of Pinhead... here's a nice now and then via EV Transitions at First Avenue and St. Mark's Place... Alex has one too at 14th Street and Irving Place...

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

Now and then: Bowery and First Street

Bowery at East First Street looking south toward Houston

Late 1970s...



Today...



Top photo reprinted with permission from Randall's Lost New York City Collection

Then/Now: UWS

The latest entry in David Dunlap's Then/Now series in the Times take us to the Upper West Side, Broadway between 74th and 75th. In comparing photos of that block from 1978 to today, Dunlap notes: "The time traveler recognizes Fairway and Citarella, of course, but the crowd looks younger, more prosperous and less diverse, and there are more children underfoot."

More photo fun: Catching up with Then/Now

As you may know, Times photograher David W. Dunlap has been revisiting some of the sites he shot for 1978's "The City Observed: New York," a guidebook to Manhattan by Paul Goldberger, who was then the architecture critic for the Times. (He's now at The New Yorker.)

The series started on Sept. 11, and has been running every Thursday. Dunlap explains his assignment:

Because I can still remember what the weather was like on the days I took these pictures, what the city sounded and smelled like, I was startled to look through my contact sheets recently and realize how much Manhattan had changed. New York did not just crawl out of its near-collapse in the mid-70s, it had boomed almost without interruption. Towers were inserted. Landmarks were deleted. And even in cityscapes that looked unchanged, I knew that far wealthier occupants -- residential and commercial -- could now be found behind familiar old facades.
My editors and I thought that pairing photos from then and now would be a graphic way to examine the phenomenon of urban churn that so defines this city. The series will visit a dozen or so neighborhoods, uptown and downtown, before the end of 2008. Each diptych tells its own tale, but the overall story is clear: It doesn't take much longer than a generation for New York to regenerate itself completely.

You can see the whole series here.

Hawaiian Nights in Midtown

A taste of Hawaii in New York in the 1950s and 1960s...


And today...

[1950s ads via Arkiva Tropika, where a lot more like these came from]

Now and then: 216 E. 7th Street

1979.

2008.

[Photo of 216 E. 7th St. in 1979 by Marlis Momber. Lousy photo of 216 E. 7th St. in 2008 by EV Grieve.]