Angelo Rizzuto, in 1959, was going for the same feeling as Berenice Abbott in her Changing New York photos twenty years earlier: contrast the new and the old. In this case we’ve got three eras represented: the mid- to late-1800s in the rowhouses and tenements along Third Avenue, the street running top to bottom of the shot; the 1920s and 30s in the apartment house on the far left, and (left to right) the Chanin, Chrysler, and Daily News Buildings along 42nd Street, and the 1950s in the stockier high-rises with panelized, mostly-glass curtain walls.
(As a side note, this is another unfortunately mislabeled photo. It is not an “Aerial view of New York City at East 43rd Street” because it was taken from well south of 42nd Street looking north. It may well be East 33rd Street, but figuring that out is more detective work than I’m willing to put in for this.)
The contrast is the result of something that is not in the photo but whose presence is: the Third Avenue el. It had been closed in midtown in 1955 and demolished shortly afterwards. Within a few years, many of those low-rise buildings, which had been considered to be nearly worthless because of the immediately-adjacent presence of the el, would be demolished and replaced by new and much larger structures. Similar redevelopment took place on Second and Sixth Avenues after the els were removed; Ninth Avenue less so.
It probably goes without saying that midtown east – the background of this photo – is now much more heavily built up with high-rises.
You must be logged in to post a comment.