The book ny Then and Now has pictures of an equivalent locations early within the twentieth century and within the 1970. This pair of images is one among my favorites: the buildings have hardly changed, so it shows very clearly how the car has transformed the town .
The first picture shows East 116th St. west of Lexington Ave in 1915. it's striking how spacious and calm it seems. This was a middle-class neighborhood - all the lads are wearing suits - but it had been a time when the center class didn't own vehicles. In pictures of made neighborhoods from an equivalent period, you see horses and carriages parked at the curb, but here there are not any vehicles in the least apart from one horse-drawn wagon doing road maintenance work and one streetcar. Notice the check in the left that says "All cars transfer to Bloomingdales"; in fact , once they say "cars," they're talking about streetcars.
The second picture shows an equivalent location in 1975. Density is slightly less than it had been in 1915, because a three-story apartment house with stores on the proper has been replaced by a one-story grocery . Yet the neighborhood looks congested instead of spacious. the road has been widened and therefore the sidewalks narrowed. A tree has been removed to permit the road widening. The streets are crammed with cars, and there's a conflict between pedestrians crossing and a truck turning. The Bloomingdales sign remains there, but so faded that you simply cannot read it.
There are many similar pairs of images during this book: Edward Watson, ny Then And Now (Dover, 1976).
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