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Fascinating Pictures of New York City From the 1870s to 1930s_Ha
New York City has a long and sprawling history, but looking at the city today, it's hard to tell what it looked like in the past. Luckily, an enterprising coder has solved that problem by creating a Google Street View map for New York City for the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Developer Dan Vanderkam collaborated with the New York Public Library to plot all the old photos from the Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s collection on an interactive map.
The project, called OldNYC, lets you browse 19th-century New York as easily as you would click around on Google Maps. The collection contains over 80,000 original photographs.
Visit the OldNYC site here, or look below for some of the best photos of the city in the past, marked with their locations.
Brooklyn Bridge under construction, 1873
Fifth Avenue, east side, 1885
Central Park, 1892
Wall Street, west across Broad (left) and Nassau (right) Street's, to Broadway, 1894
Fifth Avenue at N.E. corner of 46th Street, 1899
Broadway, west side, north from West 34th Street, 1901
Skating on the frozen pond at 110th Street and the Botanical Gardens in Central Park, 1905
Fifth Avenue, north from 25th Street, 1909
Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street, 1910
At the racetrack, Pelham Parkway, 1910
Bryant Park, 1912
An open-air concert at the Music Pavilion, Central Park, 1912
42nd Street & Fifth Avenue, 1913
Bathing at Coney Island
Queensboro Bridge Connection, 1917
The Victory Arch on Fifth Avenue at 25th Street, 1918
Broad Street, 1920
Broadway & West 34th Street, 1921
Typical noonday street rush at Sixth Ave., and 34th Street, 1921
Country house (now JFK airport), Queens, 1922
560 Fifth Avenue, at S.W. corner of 46th Street, 1926
West 42nd Street, 1928
Broadway, west side, from 34th to 38th Streets, 1928
Coca-Cola ad Weehawken & Christopher, 1929
19 West 34th Street (Fifth Avenue - Sixth Avenue), ca. 1929
East 86th Street, north side, west of Third Avenue, 1932
Art exhibit, Greenwich Village, 1933
Fifth Avenue, East side, and 42nd Street, 1933
A market scene on Ninth Avenue, near West 40th Street, 1936
Sixth Avenue & West 42nd Street, 1930s
(via Insider)