Changes and Not

I almost missed this 1938 entry in Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York” project, because it’s mislabelled at the New York Public Library web site as “Vista, Thomas Street”. We all make mistakes, and whomever confused Thames and Thomas hid the location of this photo by accident. In any case, Abbott was standing on Thames between Greenwich and Trinity, looking east.

The two big buildings in the background, on the other side of Trinity Place, are the near-twins: U. S. Realty Building on the left, Trinity Building (the old home of OSE) on the right. They were about 35 years old when this picture was taken, but their historicist style makes them look older. The older, much smaller buildings in the foreground were probably 80 to 100 years old when this picture was taken, and are now all gone. They helped Abbott make her general point in the project, which is that the new New York and the old New York are always intertwined by location.

On this short side street we gave a hat store and three eateries: a tavern, a cafe/grill, and a cafeteria. The cafeteria was run by Consumers Cooperative Services, and presumably was aiming for the inexpensive but respectable market segment unlike, say, the Thames Tavern.

Finally, I’m out of town this week, but there are blog posts queued up and posting automatically in my absence.