The prospect of employment in a rapidly expanding industrial economy brought millions of immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Latin America to the brink of America in the period 1891 to 1930. This was also a period of intense social, economic, and political anxiety in the United States. Growing social and economic pressures posed by industrialization, sprawling urban cities, violent labor uprisings, economic depression, fears of middle-class "race suicide," the changing structure of American authority, and a fractured sense of American unity all fueled growing nativist sentiment in the United States.
The nation was gripped in the beginnings of an effort to contain a growing sense of disorder, a sense that immigrants, garbage, unionism, corruption, and vice were all exceeding the bounds of their containment and that those bounds must be reestablished. In New York City, in 1890, Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives-a photo documentary of ghetto conditions that would have national impact. The following year, Josiah Strong pointed out that "a mighty emergency is upon us."
Here is an amazing collection of rare vintage photos capturing street scenes in New York City during the 1890s.
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| The Bowery, New York Times, 1896 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Union Square in 1893 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| The Harlem River Speedway and High Bridge in 1898 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Tony Pastor's 14th Street Theatre, 1895 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Union Square West and 17th Street, September 25, 1891 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Wall Street in 1898 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Westchester Avenue, The Bronx, 1895 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Billboards in Times Square, ca. 1890s |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Billboards on 42nd Street at Broadway, Times Square, 1898 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Bowling Green Park in 1896 |
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| Broadway and 23rd Street (before the Flatiron Building), 1899 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Brooklyn Bridge (from the Manhattan side), 1894 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Construction at Columbus Circle, 1895 |
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| Cutting ice in the Bronx, ca. late 1890s |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Duane Street in 1891 |
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| Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, 1899 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Girls settling with the cabby, 1895 |
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| Greeley Square in 1898 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Herald Square, 6th Avenue, Broadway, and 35th Street, NYC, 1898 |
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| High Bridge, from Washington Heights with The Bronx to the left, 1892 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| New York City El on The Bowery, 1895 |
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| New York in winter, 1895 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| On Westchester Avenue, the Bronx, 1898 |
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| Policeman on a New York street, 1896 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Steeplechase Park, Coney Island, Brooklyn, 1899 |
Rare and Amazing Vintage Photographs Captured Street Scenes of New York City in the 1890s
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| Surf Avenue, Coney Island, 1896 |
