How times have changed in New York City! Extraordinary colour photographs reveal 1940s life....

Daily Mail (UK) ^ | 13th September 2011 | Mark Duell

[PotatoHeadMick]

Extraordinary colour photographs reveal 1940s life in the Big Apple in all its glory Photos by Indiana snapper Charles Weever Cushman in 1941 and 1942 Expensive colour Kodachrome was used to take impressive collection Many buildings have since been demolished but some of them still stand

It’s been 70 years since an Indiana photographer visited New York City and returned home with an amazing collection of holiday snaps.

But Charles Weever Cushman’s pictures are even more impressive today, as they were taken on pricey colour Kodachrome and look far more recent than they actually are.

He went around the city taking photos of architecture such as the Brooklyn Bridge and other parts of the Manhattan skyline - and it’s hard to believe they were taken while World War Two was going on.

[cripplecreek]

Trailers for sale or rent

Rooms to let...fifty cents.

No phone, no pool, no pets

I ain't got no cigarettes

Ah, but..two hours of pushin' broom

Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room

I'm a man of means by no means

King of the road.

[PotatoHeadMick]

I can certainly see that your turning point is very valid but I just wonder at the speed of it.

Could NYC have fallen from a reasonably civilised city (not to put on rose-tinted spectacles, we know from gangster movies of the twenties and thirties that the place could be rough at times) to the squalor of Fort Apache the Bronx, Kojak and Death Wish in such a short time? The changes you point to have wrought untold damage but they took generations to reveal themselves.

I’m wondering what is behind the sudden change in NYC from a working city, ie made up of working, ordinary people (even the homeless guys look like they’d take a job if offered) to today’s city made up of deadbeats, welfare bums and super rich.

When did the working classes start leaving the city?

[Pharmboy]

Thanks for posting...I grew up there. Great photos...a treasure.

[Roccus]

Most of the pictures of tenements were on the Lower East Side. The demographic changed there drastically in the 60s. The waterfront changed around that same time also, due to the loss of shipping. The fight over containerization vs bulk cargo spelled the deathknell for Manhattan as a major cargo port. The advent of commercial jet travel killed the passenger ship business. The flight to suburbia with the attendant rise in auto ownership killed the ferries. People took the bridges and tunnels to cross the East and Hudson rivers.

As to what you saw on TV and in the movies, always remember, Hollywood is the land of make believe.

[Revolting cat!]

I do see a fellow holding a cellphone in one of the shots. What’s up with that?

[MichaelCorleone]

Reminds me of something I’ve heard Michael Savage say a few times: “...back when the chrome was thick and the girls were straight”.

Maybe this country was better off when everyone smoked cigarettes and drank booze.

Oh well.

[listenhillary]

This is pretty good.

1940’s

http://www.life.com/gallery/23782/image/74981967/new-yorks-golden-age-the-1940s#index/0

[cripplecreek]

Can you even get candy cigarettes anymore?

[Darnright]

>There was nothing like Kodachrome, as everyone now knows.<

Yep. Kodachrome in a large format camera created photographic detail that cannot be recreated with any digital camera marketed to the general public.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_format_(photography)

[PotatoHeadMick]

Thanks, that seems to answer my question, although the 1960’s produced the disasters we have today I don’t think they are responsible for the initial transformation which was long term and already under way.

It seems that NYC isn’t really a place for ordinary working families but that economic changes post-Second World War, exacerbated by social “reforms”, would have been behind the decline.

[muawiyah]

New York is a tad different than all other cities. You can actually go out on the public streets at night near a postal facility and not be in fear for your life.

It's been 24 hours for over a century. it still is. There are people on the streets doing stuff. Buildings work. Things happen.

[Roccus]

Something else that changed around that time was the tug/railroad car/barge traffic in the harbor. Trucks took over that last leg of the journey from the mainland to Manhattan and Long Island.

[19th LA Inf]

There was nothing like Kodachrome, as everyone now knows.

I still have a box of 35mm ASA 10 Kodachrome slides of Times Square at night, from a 3 day pass spent at the Y in 1951. My first visit to the Big Apple, I didn't have much time to see the sights, probably would have been too scared anyway. I do remember with anger being admonished to "move on" by some foreign uniform in front of the UN building. I was wearing my summer suntans too. At least, I wasn't spit on by any Americans; there was no "peace" movement during the Korean war.

[eyedigress]

Yep. I can send you a few packs but you’ll have to pay the tax.

[Roccus]

I was a NYC boy from LaGuardia to Bloomberg. Got out almost ten years ago. Although most change is gradual, the 60s saw some of the most marked turns in my life there....except for Rudy's successful war on crime.

[buccaneer81]

When did the working classes start leaving the city?

Mid 1950s. Levittown was finished in 1951.

[jocon307]

I think NYC in the late 40s and early 50s must have been the bomb! as the kids say today.

I actually do envy my parents, in-laws, etc. that they got to live there in that time as adults.

I was born in NYC in 1958 and up until all the unrest in the 60s it was a great place. The doors of the churches stood open all day, neighborhoods were economically mixed, at least in my middle class neighborhood. I went to both catholic and public school with some very wealthy people, and some very poor ones. Everyone rode the subway together, that is how I liked to put it. Then crime started to really rise and to me it was like they locked every door in the city.

It was just downhill from there, until Rudy Giuliani single handedly pulled it back from the brink. Yeah he did and don’t ever doubt it. All the while the NY Times, et al. called him a fascist pig.

I sure would have liked to live a little before I did, but I guess that was those folks reward for having grown up during the depression and fought in WWII.

[buccaneer81]

Could NYC have fallen from a reasonably civilised city (not to put on rose-tinted spectacles, we know from gangster movies of the twenties and thirties that the place could be rough at times) to the squalor of Fort Apache the Bronx, Kojak and Death Wish in such a short time?

It cleaned up just as quickly when Guiliani became mayor. It was still dangerous and mighty grimy in 1988. By 1995 things had turned 180 degrees for the better.

[jocon307]

“If so it must have been a huge and very sudden change...”

It was potato, see my post #57. It was shocking and quite noticeable even to a kid who was 7 or 8 in 1965. And then it just kept getting worse.

[supremedoctrine]

I have in my possession probably five hundred or more kodachrome slides in boxes, part of the estate of a much older friend of ours who died about a month before 9-11.
Also about a dozen small 8mm film reels (Kodachrome Color safety film) some from the early 50s,some the late 50s,early 60s when he toured with the likes of Paul Anka, Tony Bennett, etc. He was a pianist and musical director who worked with these guys and many others. I haven’t seen any of the film but look forward to. I just noticed one reel marked HAVANA 1958. THAT should be interesting. Stuff from Latin America too. I have an old 8MM projector I got at a yard sale a long time ago, now all I need is to find a screen~ What can I view those slides with?