Every building in NYC, circa 1940.. [View all]

[Princess Turandot]

The NYC Municipal Archives recently digitized a collection of photos taken during the 1940s of every building in NYC.

The black and white photos were intended to aid the city in assessing property taxes: as a result, they're not exactly worthy of framing. But if you are familiar with an area and want to see how it looked 70-some years ago, it's kind of cool. When I looked at the building where I grew up, I was quite surprised to see that it once had a small garden area in front of it.

Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration, in conjunction with the New York City Department of Taxation, organized teams of photographers to shoot pictures of every building in the five boroughs of New York City. The photographs were taken to improve the process of determining and recording property value assessments.

This link is to the Manhattan set: http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/NYCMA~5~5
The 'category pages' option lets you select places/streets by name from a list.

You can select a different borough using the menu on the left.