Amazing Historical Photos Of New York City In The 1800s
When we think of modern-day New York City, we picture a bustling metropolis with huge skyscrapers, imposing concrete canyons, every kind of food and culture imaginable, and Times Square glittering with lights and possibilities. Back in the 1800s, though, New York was a very different place — and it’s difficult to understand quite how different until you see it with your own eyes. These incredible photographs of the most famous city in the world show how far its come over the past few centuries.
1. Care for a shoe shine?
Shoe shiners still ply their trade in NYC today, but the profession is very different to how it was in the late 1800s. Back then, young shoeshine boys from poor families often brought in a significant amount of their household’s income. This photo was taken in 1897 on Mulberry Street and features a shoeshine boy about to receive some business from a local policeman.
Interestingly, Mulberry Street was nicknamed the “Italian Wall Street” because it was home to several banks which immigrants used to send their wages home to their families in Italy. Maybe this boy was one of them!
2. New York’s finest
This portrait of New York’s finest was taken in 1880, and at that point the NYPD had only existed for 35 years! Formed in 1845 and modeled after London’s Metropolitan Police, the NYPD had a pretty dismal reputation at this time. It was a known hotbed of corruption, and poor neighborhoods constantly complained about the brutality of their treatment by the police.
It wasn’t until Theodore Roosevelt — yes, the future President of the United States — became head of the Police Commission in 1895 that corruption began being weeded out.
3. Suffragettes take to the streets
In the late 1800s, the suffragette movement was gaining steam all over America. Women wanted the right to vote and to not be discriminated against because of their sex, and schools like The Cooper Union helped them get their message out there. This photo was taken outside the Union, an institution formed by industrialist Peter Cooper that charged no tuition fees and accepted students of all sexes, ethnicities, religions, and levels of wealth.
Women in New York state finally achieved the vote in 1917, with these suffragettes and places like the Union being integral in pushing the issue forward.
4. Sweatshop horror
In the late 1800s, the Lower East Side was one of the world’s most overcrowded neighborhoods. A huge immigrant population settled there with hopes of seizing the American Dream, but this involved turning their tenement buildings into makeshift sweatshops. They had to sew and tailor as many items of clothing as they could handle each and every day.
Many three-room apartments would house a family of six and up to 30 workers, all crammed together in sweltering conditions. Some escaped this life and ran their own businesses, but many others died of exhaustion and disease before their dream became a reality.
5. Watch out for cyclists
Fifth Avenue is absolutely iconic for shopping, and people come from all over the world to spend, spend, spend in its plush boutique stores. Back in 1897, it was home to many of the city’s wealthiest elite, including the Vanderbilts, whose patriarch Cornelius owned a railroad/shipping empire.
The biggest difference to today that this picture shows is that local residents actually had room to cycle freely on the road. If you try to do that today on Fifth Avenue, you’ll be weaving in and out of cars, buses, taxicabs, and trucks, not to mention the hordes of shoppers seeking something shiny!
6. Hazardous construction site
When an out-of-towner thinks of New York City, they think of craning their necks to gaze up at impossibly tall skyscrapers. But can you imagine what it was like when these behemoths were being constructed? It would have looked like this, with workers somehow standing confidently on rickety-looking scaffolding that would make us feel sick to our stomachs.
These brave construction workers helped shape the modern city skyline between the 1880s and 1930s, and we salute them for it. After all, we’d have been far too scared to go up there ourselves!
7. Boys only!
Journalist Jacob Riis took this photograph of a classroom full of boys in the Essex Market School on the Lower East Side around 1886. The “school” wasn’t actually a school at all; it was part of the Essex Street jail-court complex and had open gas jets burning near the ceiling while the poor kids tried to learn.
In 1902 Riis wrote, “The sanitary authorities twice condemned the Essex Market school… as wholly unfit for children to be in but failed to catch the ear of the politician who ran things unhindered.” It wound up being demolished in 1905.
8. Immigrants on the Lower East Side
From the 1840s onwards, immigrants came to live on the Lower East Side. Germans were first but were followed by Italians and Eastern Europeans of Jewish descent — Hungarians, Romanians, Polish, Russians, Slovakians. The area became a true cultural melting pot, and this is still the case today — although modern living conditions are a lot better!
These days the LES is a perfect destination to find amazing food and wonderful community experiences, as well as the stories of families whose ancestors first settled there hundreds of years ago.
9. Brodie’s bar
In this picture we see daredevil Steve Brodie sinking a cold one in his very own tavern at 114 Bowery at Grand Street. Brodie shot to fame in 1886 when he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge — which had only just opened to the public — and became the first person to live to tell the tale.
People flocked to his bar in droves, and the establishment became a makeshift museum dedicated to the stunt. Whether or not Brodie was telling the truth is up for debate, though; many believe he faked the leap with a dummy!
10. Building the Brooklyn Bridge
To millions of New Yorkers, the Brooklyn Bridge is indispensable. It's a massive feat of granite and steel engineering which enables 150,000 people to quickly get between Manhattan and Brooklyn every single day. Building the bridge took 14 long years between 1869 and 1883, and cost $15 million — an eye-watering $320 million in today’s money.
Sadly, at least 24 people lost their lives during its construction. This includes the bridge's original architect John Augustus Roebling, who died from tetanus when an East River boat crushed his toes only months before building started!
11. The Big Crapple
This pic, taken circa 1898, shows the well-to-do denizens of Fifth Avenue going about their business while a horse-drawn carriage awaits its next passenger. What the picture isn’t showing us, though, is the — how to put this politely — by-product of the horses. You see, by 1880 there were 150,000 horses in the city pulling carriages, but this amounted to 100,000 tons of excrement produced every year.
It became a huge problem to keep the city clean, and would continue to be an issue until the motorcar lessened the need for horses in the 1910s. Until then, people strolling through the city had to watch their step!
12. Friends jumping rope
Walk down the streets of NYC today and you might see groups of kids playing Double Dutch. Walk down those same streets in the late 1800s, though, and you’d likely see full-grown adults in suits and dresses jumping rope! The game’s origins can be traced to 17th century Dutch settlers, and most players were boys.
But over the years, girls and young women began taking up the pastime. They would sing songs and try to perfect their athletic skills while they jumped, while boys and young men tended to make it more of a “me against you” competition. This group seems to be having a grand ol' time.
13. Before the iPhone
More than 120 years before we all had high definition cameras in our smartphones, Eastman Kodak was pioneering photography. The company launched its first camera in 1889, and female employees would develop prints by holding them up to sunlight in the factory penthouse on State Street. Interestingly, women didn’t just work for Kodak — they were also the main target demographic!
Nancy Martha West wrote that the company hoped ladies would “see photography not only as a necessary component of domestic life but as an integral part of the world of fashion and feminine beauty.”
14. Building the Statue of Liberty
In this incredible photograph, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi is working on his greatest creation: the Statue of Liberty. Bartholdi first travelled to the U.S. in 1871 to campaign for Lady Liberty to act as a gift from his native France, commemorating the 100 year anniversary of American independence, gained when the two countries allied during the American Revolution.
He raised funding throughout the 1870s, then built the incredible statue in Paris before dismantling and shipping to New York. It was then reassembled and opened to the public in 1886!
15. Operator speaking!
Around the turn of the century, working at a switchboard was strictly a job for women. But here's a fun fact: when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, switchboard operators were teen boys. This was until they found out the teens were a tad brusque on the phone, and Bell suggested replacing them with women, who were expected by society to always remain polite!
These ladies packed tightly together at the Cortlandt Exchange in NYC had to be courteous while working long shifts in straight-backed chairs. And they weren’t even allowed to talk to each other.
16. Life before snow plows
Nowadays, a blizzard could definitely cause disruption in New York, but thanks to modern equipment such as snow plows, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as devastating as the blizzard of 1888. On March 11th, 85 mile-per-hour winds hit the city, the East River completely froze over, and snow drifts two stories high blanketed everything in white.
Over 200 people lost their lives, and 15,000 people found themselves stranded when the city’s elevated trains broke down. Hell, even Wall Street shut down for three straight days! When the money men can’t even get to work, you know it’s serious.
17. An old school deli
We’re willing to bet that, if you walked past an Italian deli that displayed its meats and cheeses like this today, you’d keep on walking! Modern food hygiene simply wouldn’t allow store owners to stack and hang their wares in the open air like this; it looks like an invitation for salmonella!
This is what Lower East Side residents were used to back in 1890, though, and to be honest, they probably had stronger stomachs than us. Still, we’ll stick with our modern refrigerated food displays, thank you very much!
18. Bellevue pioneers
The medical and surgical advancements made around the turn of the century were truly incredible, and Bellevue — New York’s biggest public hospital — was well and truly at the forefront. For example, according to historian David Oshinsky, most surgeons in this period “held instruments in their teeth, passed unwashed artery clamps from patient to patient, and closed wounds with catgut discolored by filth” - but not at Bellevue.
Instead, it was a pioneer in adopting germ theory, with surgeon William Halsted creating a sanitary surgical tent within the institution.
19. Sunbathing at Coney Island
In 2020 New York City claimed the dubious honor of being named the most congested city in the U.S. In fact, drivers lost a mind-boggling 100 hours on average sitting in traffic jams that year. The sheer thought of it is enough to make you wonder why anybody drives in the city at all!
If you think traffic jams in NYC are an invention of the automobile, though, think again! This photo was taken on Lower Broadway in 1895, and shows that horses and wagons are just as prone to grinding traffic to a standstill.
20. Traffic before cars
Way back in 1897, these “Jolly Bathers” had a whale of a time at New York’s iconic Coney Island. The seaside resort has developed a mythic quality over the years, with Forward’s Ezra Glinter writing, “For generations of New Yorkers, from immigrant Jews and Italians living in Brownsville to current-day Park Slope parents, Coney Island is a beach you can get to by subway, with roller coasters and carnival games to boot.”
He added, “Even if we’re not living three families to a tenement, swimming and sunbathing have a self-evident appeal.” That’s a pretty perfect description!
21. A roof party in 1898
If you’ve ever lived in New York, we’re pretty certain you’ve attended a party on the roof of an apartment building. Back in 1898, though, Roof Garden Theaters were all the rage. Planners realized they could squeeze more profit out of their buildings by turning the roofs into entertainment venues, and people could access them fairly easily thanks to a relatively new invention known as the elevator.
Amazingly, these theaters would often seat between 400 and 2,000 people, which is a heck of a lot more than we saw at our last rooftop party!
22. Busy beach at Coney Island
Today’s Coney Island visitors will likely be wearing shorts and t-shirts, sundresses, and bikinis. Back in 1896, though, the dress code was very different. Men going in the water wore striped vests and pants down to their knees, while little boys sported sailor tops. The men who didn’t want to swim would simply have rocked up in blazers and straw hats!
Women had it the worst, though; many would have waded into the water in their wool dresses, which stretched right down to their ankles.
23. Immigrants at Ellis Island
75 percent of the immigrants trying to enter the U.S. in the late 1800s/early 1900s came through Ellis Island — and they did so in incredible numbers. In those days, no documentation or passport or visa was required to be allowed in, and there was no limit on entries too, so entire families came from all over the world to seek a better life in America.
It’s estimated that between 1892 and 1924, only two percent of applicants were denied, meaning 12 million people successfully found the new lives they were seeking.
24. Ellis Island in color
For many Ellis Island immigrants, the journey was difficult, but their introduction to the U.S. was even harder. Louis Adamic, a Slovenian who arrived in 1913, remembered, “The first night in America I spent with hundreds of other recently arrived immigrants in an immense hall with tiers of narrow iron-and-canvas bunks, four deep. I was assigned to a top bunk.”
He continued, “Unlike most of the steerage immigrants, I had no bedding with me, and the blanket which someone threw at me was too thin to be effective…I shivered, sleepless all night, listening to snores and dream-monologues in perhaps a dozen different languages.”
25. Gymnastics!
Admittedly, the attire these acrobatic ladies are wearing isn’t exactly the most practical for gymnastics, but it’s fascinating to know the discipline goes this far back in history. It had first come to the U.S. in the 1820s, pioneered by a pair of German immigrants. And like so many other cultures, it eventually found its way to New York City.
By 1896 men’s gymnastics events were included in the Olympic Games, although the first women’s events wouldn’t occur until 1928. As this picture attests to, though, ladies in New York were practicing the sport almost 30 years earlier in 1899.
26. Grocery shopping in Little Italy
This pic was taken in 1897 on Mulberry Street in Lower Manhattan — otherwise known as Little Italy. A year earlier, The New York Times had profiled the thriving neighborhood, writing, “They are laborers; toilers in all grades of manual work; they are artisans, they are junkman, and here, too, dwell the rag pickers.”
It continued, “Here are all sorts of stores, pensions, groceries, fruit emporiums, tailors, shoemakers, wine merchants, importers, musical instrument makers. There are notaries, lawyers, doctors, apothecaries, undertakers. There are more bankers among the Italians than among any other foreigners except the Germans in the city.”
27. Women’s football circa 1885
Women’s sports in 2023 is a big business, and is largely taken seriously by fans and the media. Back in 1885, though, if you were one of the ladies on this NYC football team, you would have faced ridicule and criticism. Football was seen as a man’s game, whereas women were expected to adhere to more feminine practices.
As De Montfort University’s Karen Elizabeth Taylor put it, “Football’s importance as a site in which men could demonstrate their orthodox manliness and masculinity in this period constrained women primarily to playing one-off games for their fun and enjoyment, rather than in organised competition.”
28. A brave — or insane — construction worker
In the 1880s, as skyscrapers began to be built as high into the sky as possible, the construction industry sought a new breed of ironworker. After all, to do that job hundreds — and sometimes even more than a thousand — feet off the ground, you would need unbreakable nerves.
Take this guy, who's seen here sitting idly on the edge of a steel beam. He wants to snap a photo of a bridge being built. There were very little safety precautions back then — no safety ropes or wires, no helmets — and yet there he sits without fear. Incredible.
29. Beneath the river
This fascinating photo shows the end of the first air chamber used during the first construction attempt of the Hudson River Tunnel. The project began in 1874 and — as with all construction projects back then — it wound up being extremely dangerous for its workers.
This air chamber was under the river, and though they were using compressed air to keep water out and hold the iron-plated wall in place, the seal didn’t always hold. Devastating blow-outs occurred in 1880 and 1882, completely flooding the tunnel. In 1887 the project was abandoned with only 1,600 feet of tunnel dug.
30. Coming to NYC for a husband
In 1907, the steamship Baltic came through Ellis Island filled to the brim with English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh women who were banking on finding their Mr. Right! The New York Times wrote, “1,002 young women tripped down the gangplank and looked about them for husbands.”
The outlet continued, “Some of the young women found those for whom they looked awaiting them on the pier. Still, there were many leftovers, and be it said — to the shame of Manhattan bachelors — that these announced it as their intention to look inland for their affinities.” Dating was certainly different in those days!
31. An ancestor to the mall
If you think internet pop-up ads are bad, you should have seen 1880s New York — the ads lined the buildings! The marketing approach to old stores seemed to be ‘write your name in letters as large as possible and attach it to your place of business.’
Looking at this picture is almost like seeing the ancestor of the modern mall. It’s hard to believe it’s an NYC street and not a cowboy town, though.
32. The “el”
For New Yorkers who routinely ride the subway, the now-scrapped 1870s elevated trains — or “the els” — are whimsical pieces of societal nostalgia. Sure, they revolutionized public transport in a time when crossing the street was far more dangerous.
But as history professor Clifton Hood told website Bloomberg in 2016, “The els were loud, dirty, messy and slow… run by monopolistic companies that provided bad service.” At least the subway’s fast.
33. A penny-farthing for your thoughts?
Early penny-farthing bicycles, with their overly large front wheels and theatrically small rear ones, are a quintessential Victorian image. And it’s true that English inventor James Starley made them. Yet they weren’t just used across the pond! New Yorkers rode them, too.
And seeing the asymmetrical vehicles side-by-side with a modern bicycle just highlights how strange and alien they look to us now.
34. Ice skating in Central Park
Are you familiar with Central Park’s ice-skating scene? Maybe you’ve even been on a romantic date there, or enjoyed a fun time with your close friend. If it holds sentimental meaning to you then you’ll get a kick out of how ice skating has a long history in the park, going back over a century.
Just look at these two partners skating circles around each other. Some things never change!
35. Chowing down at an oyster shack
Coastal cuisine has existed in The Big Apple for a long time, though it’s evolved over the past couple of centuries. You may be familiar with luxury seafood restaurants such as Morty’s Oyster Stand in the Hamptons. Yet back in the 1800s they were stands by name and by nature — just a person selling their wares on the dockside.
Now, seafood has officially come out of its shell in New York. You can find family restaurants and chains on practically every street.
36. Wallack's Theatre on Broadway
No matter how familiar you are with the lights of Broadway, you won’t see anything resembling Wallack’s nowadays. But in its heyday, the theater was among the most famous in the city. Actor Lester Wallack originally built the theater, though the building changed both names and hands multiple times.
It even appeared to rise from the ashes of its demolition before astonished early movie-goers, though this was simply a reversed film shown to symbolize New York’s cyclic construction.
37. Garbage clean up
Then there was life without garbage trucks. We take those huge vehicles (and the people who operate them) for granted now, and some of you may even curse them under your breath if you’re one of New York’s unlucky drivers. But back in the 1800s, they were just carts overflowing with society’s debris.
And by the look of the streets, they had a lot of work. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. We doubt the job smells any better these days...
38. Women-only subway car
Did you know that for a short time NYC had women-only subway cars? The idea was obviously to prevent women from being harassed and targeted by male criminals. It didn’t last, though. Apparently, some women back then preferred to ride with men and didn’t want a few bad apples to spoil the bunch.
Interestingly, some countries — notably Japan — still have subway cars reserved for women.
39. Walking on the Brooklyn Bridge
You’ve seen pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge under construction, and here it is completed! After its public opening, worrisome rumors created concerns about the bridge’s stability and even led to a stampede that proved tragically fatal for 12 people.
Happily, none other than P.T. Barnum calmed the panic by taking 21 elephants across the bridge to prove its safety.
40. Welcome to Manhattan Island
This woman taking a ferry to Manhattan Island is an incredible example of how much fashions have changed over the decades. Yet contrary to how you might imagine older attire, she’s very elegant and refined: she’s a stark contrast to the smoky industrial hardness in the background.
And of course, the architecture gives a fascinating glimpse into how Manhattan itself has risen since those early days.
41. Cab stand at Madison Square
It’s infamously difficult to catch a cab in the Big Apple, especially at certain times of the day. Yet the cabs of the past were a different matter entirely. For one, they weren’t even cars! New Yorkers in the 1900s caught horse-drawn carriages, which we refer to as cabs.
But perhaps even more mystifying, they actually waited at the side of the roads for customers. Can you even imagine?
42. Take me out to the ballgame
The more things change, the more they stay the same! Baseball, the nation’s pastime, has played a large role in the U.S. sports world throughout recent history, and New York is no exception. When a game was on, the Polo Grounds would flood with baseball fans, glued as ever to the action on the field.
A sea of boater hats replace baseball caps, but it’s a familiar image at its core.
43. Fire-escape steps
Some fashions seem to be on a constant loop of re-emergence, but this one hasn’t returned… yet. New Yorkers Winnifred Brown, left, and Louise White embrace the trend of their age by rolling their stockings down to the tops of their shoes.
This was quite a controversy in the 1900s, signifying a spark of rebellion when women were vying for independence.