1900s

Mulberry Street, Chinatown, New York City

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The view looking north on Mulberry Street, about half a block above Bayard Street, around 1900. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The view in 2014:

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In 1900, this part of Mulberry Street was a part of Little Italy, and as evidenced by the picture was a bustling commercial center.  Today, however, Little Italy has shrunk, and this block is now a part of Chinatown.  Little Italy is still there – the “Little Italy” sign over the street is barely visible in the distance of the 2014 photo, across Canal Street, but it now occupies only a few blocks along Mulberry Street.  This section of Mulberry Street is just a block away from the infamous Mulberry Bend, which was at the heart of the Five Points slum in the 19th century, and which author/muckraking journalist Jacob Riis described in 1896 as being “the foul core of New York’s slums.”  All seems well on the outside of the 1900 photo, although I’m sure it was a different story inside many of the tenement buildings.  Many of the buildings are still there – it’s tough to tell on the left side, but most of them seem to bet the same, and the first four buildings on the right all appear to be the same, although with some changes along the way.

Corner of Doyers & Pell, Chinatown, New York City

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The view looking down Doyers Street from Pell Street, around 1900. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The view in 2014:

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These photos show the other end of Doyers Street, 200 feet from this photo, along the narrow, winding street.  Over a century later, it is still at the heart of Chinatown, and even many of the buildings are still there, including the two on the right-hand side of the photo.  The building on the left of the 1900 photo, though, is gone, along with most other wood-frame buildings in Manhattan.

Doyers Street, Chinatown, New York City

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The view looking up Doyers Street from Chatham Square, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The view in 2014:

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Doyers Street is a narrow, crooked street in the middle of Chinatown that, around the time that the first photo was taken, began to acquire the nickname of “the Bloody Angle” for the number of Chinese gang-related shootings that occurred throughout the first part of the 20th century.  The “Chinese Tuxedo” signs in the first photo are for a high-end Chinese restaurant that catered to American tastes.  Kind of like an early 20th century P.F. Chang’s, with some gang violence added into the atmosphere.

South Street Docks, New York City

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The view looking north along the South Street docks along the East River around 1900, with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2024:

There isn’t much left to remind visitors of the bustling seaport that lower Manhattan once was, and South Street itself, which was teeming with activity in 1900, is now pedestrian esplanade beneath the elevated FDR Drive. The top photo shows the piers of the New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company, also known as the Ward Line. These were located just to the north of Wall Street on the East River, but today the only surviving structure from the 1900 photo that still exists today is the Brooklyn Bridge, seen in the background of both photos.

Wall Street Docks, New York City

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The view of the docks at the foot of Wall Street along South Street in New York City, between 1900 and 1905. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The same view in 2024:

Located on the East River waterfront, across South Street from the foot of Wall Street, the ferry terminal at the left provided passage from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Although the importance of East River ferries decreased once the Brooklyn Bridge and subsequent bridges were completed, ferries still play a role in New York’s transportation, as seen in the 2024 photo, where the site is still being used as a ferry terminal.  The actual boats visible in the first photo are not the ferries; they belonged to the US Army Quartermaster Corps, which no longer has a base in this area.

 

 

Mount Tom Summit House, Holyoke, Mass. (2)

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The view of the Mount Tom Summit House between 1905 and 1915. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The view in 2014:

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These photos were taken from near the location of the upper station of the trolley line; from here, visitors would walk up to the Summit House. Today, the Metacomet & Monadnock Trail traverses the summit and goes past the location where the photos were taken, on its way from the Connecticut state line to the summit of Mt. Monadnock in southern New Hampshire.