44 Colorized Photos That Bring The Streets Of Century-Old New York City To Life
Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Ryan StennesThe interior of a subway car including well-dressed female passengers and a uniformed male conductor. Circa 1910.
In the years just after the Civil War, the population of New York City sat at slightly less than 1 million. By the close of World War II, some 75 years later, that population had skyrocketed to approximately 7.5 million (and has increased by “only” about 1 million in the 75 years since).
Across the decades between those two wars, New York’s population and the city itself grew by unprecedented leaps and bounds as immigrants from around the world streamed in and new construction reached, figuratively and literally, for the skies.
Yet, like so many periods of great growth, these decades also brought great tumult and upheaval as poverty and overcrowding crippled the downtrodden while street gangs and organized crime flourished in response.
Such poverty ultimately came to a head during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the situation grew so dire that parts of Central Park itself became a shanty town. But it was during those same few years that the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, and many other landmarks were built.
In fact, much of what defines New York in the popular imagination to this day rose out of the ashes of the 1929 Wall Street crash that kickstarted the Great Depression. Once again, tumult and growth went hand in hand as New York City became the metropolis we know today.
Experience this tumult and growth for yourself in this gallery of colorized photos of New York taken between roughly the 1870s and the 1940s.
