1940s Tax Department photographs
Collection REC0040 - RG 035. Department of Finance
1940s Tax Department photographs
Collection
REC-0040
Collection
REC-0040
The 1940s Tax Department photographs consists of over 720,000 photos of parcels of land in New York City. Most of these images were photographed by Works Projects Administration (WPA) staff from 1939-1941. Originally the project plan included updating the property cards annually, but due to limited staff and resources, an estimated 50,000 of the buildings were reshot by Tax Department staff in 1949-1951. These images do not contain a signboard with a block and lot identifier. The images were identified by the borough indexes which indicated the parcel information for each roll of film. In addition to photographs of the buildings, there are outtakes. These images are photos taken by WPA photographers that do not include a building. Often these are images captured when the camera fell or the photographer reloaded the film. There are also images of a photographer posing in front of the camera. Rolls of film from the original collection were not transferred to the Municipal Archive from the Department of Finance, and some of the rolls of film were deteriorated making them unable to be digitized, because of this not all properties there were photographed are available.
This significant collection provides insight into life in pre-World War II New York City; individually, the images serve as a photographic record of every taxable building at that time. The images show every building in all five boroughs, regardless of stature, and may be the only photograph of these buildings. At this time, New York was uniquely comprised of metropolis, farms, villages, suburbs, and tenements. No favoritism was shown when photographing the high-rise apartments of Midtown, beachfront bungalows of the Rockaways, mansions of Riverdale, tenements of the Lower East side, or brownstones in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Post-war New York went through many changes that led to large numbers of buildings being lost through demolition, abandonment, arson, and urban renewal. Construction of highways, subsidized housing complexes, and airports in Brooklyn, Harlem, the Lower East Side, the South Bronx, and Jamaica mean the images are the only visual documentation through public record of these neighborhoods.
This collection not only documented where New Yorkers worked and lived, but also how they lived. The images depict movie houses, restaurants, cafeterias, hotels, churches, service stations, shops, markets, and bars. They also show people shopping, political signs, graffiti, automobiles, horse and carriages, snow removal, and milk delivery. The value of this collection was recognized in the Final Report of the Works Projects Administration for the City of New York, 1935-1949, which predicted that “… their value, if not immediately apparent, may appear some later time as has been true of countless limited, isolated research undertaking in the history of mankind.”
This significant collection provides insight into life in pre-World War II New York City; individually, the images serve as a photographic record of every taxable building at that time. The images show every building in all five boroughs, regardless of stature, and may be the only photograph of these buildings. At this time, New York was uniquely comprised of metropolis, farms, villages, suburbs, and tenements. No favoritism was shown when photographing the high-rise apartments of Midtown, beachfront bungalows of the Rockaways, mansions of Riverdale, tenements of the Lower East side, or brownstones in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Post-war New York went through many changes that led to large numbers of buildings being lost through demolition, abandonment, arson, and urban renewal. Construction of highways, subsidized housing complexes, and airports in Brooklyn, Harlem, the Lower East Side, the South Bronx, and Jamaica mean the images are the only visual documentation through public record of these neighborhoods.
This collection not only documented where New Yorkers worked and lived, but also how they lived. The images depict movie houses, restaurants, cafeterias, hotels, churches, service stations, shops, markets, and bars. They also show people shopping, political signs, graffiti, automobiles, horse and carriages, snow removal, and milk delivery. The value of this collection was recognized in the Final Report of the Works Projects Administration for the City of New York, 1935-1949, which predicted that “… their value, if not immediately apparent, may appear some later time as has been true of countless limited, isolated research undertaking in the history of mankind.”
Extent
19.85 cubic feet (722,485 images on 130 reels)
Dates
1939-1951
bulk 1939-1941