I won’t go nuts with the NYC Department of Records photos — in FNY, I have always relied on new photos taken by me — but it’s hard to resist sometimes, like this shot of the Bowery north of Canal in 1930. A few of the buildings across the street might still be there, but they all now have new entrances and vinyl signs that cover up anything that might link them to the old photo. The elevated line was part of the Third Avenue El, which was torn down in Manhattan in 1955 and in the Bronx in 1973.
And best of all, there’s this unclassifiable lamppost — not Corvington, not bishop crook, not Type F. The city often installed shorter lampposts of wildly different designs under els, which were more numerous then.
12/6/12