Laurie says:

I just found out about this remarkable collection of photographs from Focus by Alan Taylor in the Atlantic.

The New York City Municipal Archives just released a database of over 870,000 photos from its collection of more than 2.2 million images of New York throughout the 20th century. Their subjects include daily life, construction, crime, city business, aerial photographs, and more. I spent hours lost in these amazing photos, and gathered this group together to give you just a glimpse of what’s been made available from this remarkable collection.

He has selected 53 images for the article and all of them are beautiful. I don’t know what the rest of the 870,000 photos are like but these are beautifully composed and give you a momentary immersion into their time. I had a hard time deciding on which photos to post

I grew up in New York City and almost all of these images are before my time. Even so, they have a very personal resonance for me. I’m going to have to spend some serious time looking at them.
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It’s the vaulted main room of New York City’s Grand Central Terminal with sunlight streaming in the windows.
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A worker on the Brooklyn Bridge, on November 19, 1928. (Eugene de Salignac).

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An experimental exposure made on the Queensboro Bridge on February 9, 1910 (Eugene de Salignac).

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