Incredible black-and-white photographs taken during the 1940s in New York City document the city’s day-to-day life and provide a look into a past period.
Scenes are both familiar and nostalgic, whether peddlers on the street selling fish, fresh ears of corn, or cars trapped under piles of snow.
The New York City that emerged from World War II was a very different place from the one that had entered it four years earlier. The war had a significant impact on the city.
The transition was due, in large part, to the war itself, which had finally pulled the city out of the Great Recession and ushered in an era of unparalleled prosperity. The war had also been a significant contributor to the change.
A crowd of customers gathers at Sloppy Joe’s soft drink stand during a dimout in Times Square, New York, May 21, 1942.
The explosion in commercial activity that the war brought about had ignited the city’s economic engine, pushing it to a level of economic power and dominance that had never been seen before or since.
By the late 1940s, the state of York had developed into the largest manufacturing center in the world, with 40,000 factories and more than one million factory employees. It was the largest wholesale center in the nation and was accountable for one-fifth of all wholesale transactions in the United States.
It was the biggest port in the world, with a capability of 150 million tons per year, constituting 40 percent of the nation’s waterborne freight. And it served as the financial center of the globe, where everyday trade totaled hundreds of millions of dollars.
More than 900,000 people from New York participated in the war, while more than 3 million troops and nearly 63 million tons of supplies were sent out of New York Harbor during the war.
During the height of the war, a ship would sail almost every 15 minutes. During the war, well-known landmarks like Times Square and Broadway were blacked out to safeguard against an imminent air raid on New York. Efforts were taken to prevent the city from being struck.
An Italian spaghetti house and a German health food store next to each other on 86th St. in New York, January 22, 1942.
An English writer by the name of Beverley Nichols provided the following description of New York City in the 1940s: “More than ever before, as the shop windows filed past in a glittering parade, there was the sense of New York as a great international city to which all the ends of the world had come.”
Since it had been such a significant period since the Hispanos and Isottas had slid down Piccadilly and such a considerable amount of time since the tropical fruit had glowed in the Bond Street windows, one had somehow forgotten that this was how London used to be.
Customers gather at a soft drink stand during a dimout in Times Square, New York, May 21, 1942.
Coming from that kind of London to America, in the old days, New York had seemed just American; not typical of the continent, maybe, but American first and foremost. Coming from London. At that moment, it sat at the very center of the world.
The bright lights of Times Square during the New Year’s Eve celebration, December 31, 1942.
Times Square dimout, New York, March 1, 1942.
Rows of cars lined the curb due to free parking over Labor Day weekend in New York City, September 6, 1942.
Workers prepared to lower one of the 100-pound metal cornices from the Hotel Ansonia in New York on September 22, 1942.
A boy swings and misses at a ball during a practice session in Brooklyn, N.Y., June 9, 1943.
After 18 months in the dark, theater marquees on Broadway light up again while underneath, the crowds came out of the dimout gloom in New York on November 2, 1943.
Two black Army soldiers assisted a white man who was involved in a scuffle that occurred during the outbreak of a race riot in the Harlem area on August 2, 1943.
Ice skaters in New York’s Central Park look from the top of the Savoy Plaza Hotel at 59th St. and Fifth Ave., January 9, 1944.
Pedestrians strolling Broadway stop to peek into one of the many photo studios looking for diversion in New York on December 1, 1944.
A huge crowd in New York Times Square jubilantly welcomed the news that the Japanese had accepted the Allies’ terms of surrender on August 14, 1945.
A huge crowd in New York Times Square jubilantly welcomed the news that the Japanese had accepted the Allies’ terms of surrender on August 14, 1945.
People observing the death of President Roosevelt, the United Nations flags fly at half mast at Rockefeller Plaza, New York, April 13, 1945.
People sunbathe on the beach and walk along the boardwalk at Coney Island in Brooklyn on May 27, 1945.
A Christmas Eve shopper with a crated rocking horse tries to hail a cab outside Macy’s department store in New York City on December 24, 1946.
A pushcart vendor cleans fresh fish before weighing it for a customer at the corner of Orchard St. and Stanton in the Jewish section of New York’s Lower East Side, June 1, 1946.
Enticing delicacies on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, New York, June 1, 1946.
Men stopped to look at fabric for sale at an outdoor table in front of a New York Lower East Side store on June 1, 1946.
Soldiers stand rigidly at attention in their vehicles which carry 8-inch Howitzers, during the Victory Parade of the 82nd Airborne Division on Fifth Avenue in New York, January 12, 1946.
The Third Avenue el winds its way through lower Manhattan, February 12, 1946.
A longshoreman listens to his radio as he sits on the terrace wall in front of the New York Public Library on the corner of 42nd Street in New York, January 29, 1947.
A man stares at the prices scribbled on the window of Bowery restaurant on New York’s Lower East Side, September 26, 1947.
A pedestrian stops and enjoys a hot ear of corn from the vendor in New York, July 14, 1947.
A pedestrian walked between snow drifts in Times Square on December 27, 1947.
A row of red-brick mansions peeks through Washington Square Park’s Washington Arch in New York City’s Greenwich Village on February 25, 1947.
An elderly street merchant wheels his pushcart loaded with crockery slowly along at the corner of Orchard and Delancy Streets on the Lower East Side of New York, July 14, 1947.
Passengers scurry to buses at 49th Street and Fifth Ave. as snow continues to fall, reaching a depth of 10.5 inches, on December 26, 1947.
Pedestrians make their way between cars stalled on the bridge while crossing the Grand Central Parkway at Union Turnpike, Kew Gardens, Queens, December 27, 1947.
Smoke from a massive fire pours out of Pier 57 on the Hudson River at 15th Street in New York, September 29, 1947.
The Bowery where intersected with Canal Street in New York in 1947.
The Empire State Building was seen right in this aerial view of buildings in Manhattan’s Garment District on Seventh Avenue on December 9, 1947.
The Fulton Fish Market from the corner of Fulton St. looking north, New York City, January 6, 1947.
A huge balloon in the form of a comic fireman floats over Broadway during the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, November 25, 1948.
A man takes a nap on the ground in New York, July 17, 1948.
A pretzel vendor displays his wares on an approach to the Manhattan Bridge in New York City, April 29, 1948.
A young boy draws chalk on the sidewalk in front of a tenement house on 36th Street, NYC, May 12, 1948.
Early morning in the Fulton Fish Market, New York City’s wholesale fish center, on September 5, 1948.
Police and pickets scuffle at the New York Stock Exchange entrance at 11 Wall Street in New York on March 30, 1948.
The bridge over the East 34th Street station looks north over the Third Avenue Line El train, New York City, 1948.
The crowded beach at Coney Island in Brooklyn, August 28, 1948.
Two workmen eat their lunch beside their excavation on fashionable Fifth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets in New York, June 8, 1948.
People crowd into Times Square in New York on December 31, 1949, to welcome the New Year.
Skaters glide on the ice at the center’s skating rink in midtown Manhattan, New York, December 8, 1949.
Snow-covered trees in Central Park are seen against the Essex House building on Central Park South, NYC, March 1, 1949.
West Broadway looking north from Vesey Street in New York City on July 21, 1949.
Yellow cabs line New York’s Fifth Avenue, January 15, 1949.
(Photo credit: Library of Congress / New York City Library / Wikimedia Commons / PBS: The Center of the World: New York, A Documentary Film)
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