The City At Night

Putting aside the almost poetic headline, this is, of course, an ad. The New York Edison Company, one of the ancestors of the Consolidated Edison Company, was and still is in the business of selling electric power. Showing electric lights as fundamentally changing the city, or as poetry, was part of the sales effort.

We’re somewhere in the 1910s here. The lit-up tower is Singer, and Woolworth to its right may have some minor lighting of the top of the tower. Bankers Trust is to the left of Singer, but we’re missing the big buildings of the 1920s. I think the lit-up crown on the right is the dome of the World Building. Bulbs were inefficient and short-lived, and electricity was expensive, so the big buildings mostly have their interior lights turned off.

This is a low-resolution photo on newsprint, so it’s not clear whether the lights we see along the edge of the East River are related to the piers and/or ships, or they are simply the only street lights not blocked at this angle by buildings. Note that there are no visible lights on the Brooklyn piers in the foreground.