New York of the 1980s map with 800k photos

[Art Blade]

http://80s.nyc/

"ABOUT
80s.nyc is a map-based full street view of 1980s New York City, organizing photographs from the New York City Municipal Archives' Department of Finance Collection into an easy-to-browse glimpse of the streetscape 30 years ago.

WHERE DO THESE PHOTOS COME FROM?
During the mid-1980s, the City of New York photographed every property in the five boroughs. The project had a bureaucratic origin: the photos were used by the Department of Finance to estimate real property values for taxation purposes. Buildings as well as vacant lots were photographed because both are taxed. Because it was difficult to distinguish while shooting between taxable and tax-exempt buildings, like religious institutions or government offices, the photographers just shot everything. The result is a remarkable body of imagery – over 800,000 color 35mm photos in both negative and print formats.

DO PHOTO SETS FROM OTHER DECADES EXIST?
Yes! At the end of the 1930s into the early 1940s, coordinated by the Federal Works Progress Administration, the City created its first set of "tax photos" – at that time, over 700,000 black & white 35mm photos of almost every building in New York. In some respects, this earlier photo set is more historically interesting – twice as old, and before the post-war construction boom (aided and abetted by Robert Moses) remade large swaths of the city.

However, only the 1980s photo set has been digitized."

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting, not as extensive as street view is now, but still a look at what it was like. But imagine being one of those photographers, walk down the street, stop, take a photo of a building, walk a little more, take another photo, and so on. There are a lot of buildings in NYC.....

[Art Blade]

yes, I read somewhere that it took 5 years to complete that collection

[PZ]

Very cool