Freaking Wonderful! 1911 Film Shot In NYC Colorized By Artificial Intelligence (Greenwich: license plate, ferries)
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This was the New York City of my parents' generation. It didn't seem that ancient to me since I've lots of photos from this time and heard lots of stories. My father told me that when an airplane was in the sky, everyone would stop and stare. The kids would call out "airplane, airplane."
For gentlemen, yes most did wear same straw boater or similar hat during warm weather months. This was all over North American and much of Europe, South America, Asia, etc...
You don't want to wear a wool hat during summer, and since a well dressed gentleman had to wear one when out of doors....
The ladies OTOH had much more freedom of choice. Their primary concern was keeping sun off their faces. This is also why you see so many women in this film carrying/using umbrellas on a beautiful sunny day.
i wonder how the current ghettos were like back then... south bronx, east NY, etc.
You saw one; LES/Chinatown area.
South Bronx was not a ghetto back in early 1900's. East New York only became a hood after 1950's when Pureto Ricans, AAs flooded in displacing former population of working class Italians and Jews. City doubled down on things by building public housing out there.
Italians and Jews originally fled to Canarsie, and you know what happened there.
There were however plenty of slums/ghettos right in Manhattan. Much of LES where Baruch and other NYCHA projects now stand were slum clearance projects.
Hell's Kitchen as with really much of west side from parts of Chelsea up to where Lincoln Center is today were also slums/ghettos. Again it was Robert Moses and urban renewal that pushed people out of there. Lincoln Center was a slum clearance project.
i wonder how the current ghettos were like back then... south bronx, east NY, etc.
The south Bronx was certainly not a ghetto. Germans and Irish lived there and that started to change as the immigrants from the lower east side migrated north. East New York still had a few remaining farms at that time but it was becoming more developed as the LIRR was already there and growing. The actor, William Daniels, grew up in East New York in the 1920s. East New York was also an Irish enclave prior to the 30s. The lower east side was where the slums were, consisting of sweatshops and tenements.
This is so fantastic. So much about Manhattan has changed since early 1900's but many of buildings and places are still here, especially south along Broadway from Madison Square park area.
All the various ferries from Staten Island, Brooklyn, and even New Jersey, the waterways were packed.
If your family came "off the boat" or otherwise were in NYC at this time, this the city they lived in, amazing.
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