Buildings, Now and Again

Over at Shorpy’s are pages and pages of gorgous, high-resolution photos from the past. Normally I just admire them for their ridiculous amount of detail, but when I saw this one I realized I knew that place! I never know that place! Whenever they show a picture of Olde Tymie Newe Yorke the ‘before’ is always some guy with a donkey-drawn cart standing in a dirt rut surrounded by field, and the ‘after’ is the Disney store in Times Square. What?! But this time, not only did the building look the same, and the surrounding buildings, but it’s something I pass all the time in present day!

And that little building grew up to be…a Starbucks and an Urban Outfitters! The El line is long gone and the building the guy’s scrubbing is some weird pizza shop (sorry, blue and white is a color scheme for Greek food, not pizza), but otherwise it’s the same! Fun Fact: the subway there still has the old IRT signs going down the stairs.

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I highly recommend clicking on the high-resolution image over at Shorpy’s; you can see two ladies staring out a window , a window-washer rigged with just a rope tied around his waist, a street urchin who looks like he snuck on the El, and a bowler-hatted fellow reading the paper nearby.