Ready to lose yourself in the past? The Department of Records has just launched a new web site featuring over 2.2 million previously unavailable images of the city dating all the way back to the mid-1800s. Culled from tax records, police blotters, and the darker recesses of the Municipal Archives, it's a boon to art directors and nostalgists alike. Dig in!
172 Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side, circa 1983-1988. It's now the Angel Orensanz Foundation.
Two girls stroll east along 42nd Street, circa 1890.
A haunting, if beautifully composed crime scene snap from 1915. The bodies were found at the bottom of an elevator shaft after a botched robbery.
