Viewing NYC Articles Categorized Under Aerial Photography

[PHOTO] Vintage Aerial Photograph of Midtown Skyscrapers and Times Square Circa 1920

2025-12-19T12:00:00-05:00

Ephemeral New York is a site that seeks to chronicle "an ever-changing city through faded and forgotten artifacts."

In a recent post, the site shows a vintage postcard showing a colorized aerial photograph of the "tall" skyscrapers in Midtown around 1920's Times Square.

With so many skyscrapers in the city topping out with more than 70, 80, even 100 floors, the tall buildings shown in this photo of Times Square look pretty puny. But they impressed New Yorkers at the time, and the caption on the back of the card boasts about them. “This aerial photograph of the Times Square section of New York shows many of the skyscraper office buildings located in the heart of New York,” it reads.

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[BOOKS] Check Out Jeffrey Milstein's "LA NY: Aerial Photographs of Los Angeles and New York"

2025-12-04T12:00:00-05:00

A unique dual aerial portrait of Los Angeles and New York, in a stunning case of compare and contrast from a bird’s-eye point of view

LA NY is a dazzling visual tale of two cities, Los Angeles and New York, as seen from the air. Photographed straight down at a ninety-degree angle to emphasize the particular patterns of place, how the urban grid adapts to local topography, and how the topography itself adapts to human purposes, these two cities are revealed as never before in astonishing detail. Photographer Jeffrey Milstein explores residential and commercial neighborhoods, parks and recreation spots, as well as industrial districts and the infrastructure of transportation. Iconic buildings and landmarks are easy to spot, alongside suburban housing developments, apartment complexes, commercial hubs, entertainment and financial centers, and airports and shipping terminals. Milstein’s work deftly combines architecture, science, and art.

Using high-resolution cameras mounted to a stabilizing gyro, Milstein leaned out of helicopters over Los Angeles where he grew up and over New York where he now lives, looking for shapes and patterns of culture from above, continually awed by the difference an aerial view makes. In addition to the urban topography, events and activities have also been captured, such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and outings at the beach.

LA NY: Aerial Photographs of Los Angeles and New York is available for just $29.95 on Amazon.

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[PHOTO] Vintage Aerial View of Rockefeller Center Under Construction in 1932

2025-04-02T12:00:00-04:00

In this vintage aerial photograph taken by Hamilton M. Wright for Aerial Explorations, Inc. in 1932, you can see just how massive the project was at the time. 30 Rockefeller Center was dozens of stories taller than any of it's surrounding buildings.

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Vintage Photograph Showing the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building in Downtown Brooklyn in 1929

2025-03-09T12:00:00-04:00

This great vintage aerial photograph shows the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building in 1929, the year it finished construction and opened to the public. Once the tallest building in Brooklyn, it held the title all the way until 2010, and it currently the 6th tallest at 514 feet. Here is a Google StreetView of the building from the same angle as it appears today, although at ground-level:

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[SEE IT] This Vintage Aerial Photograph Shows Lower Manhattan From Above in 1906

2024-06-14T12:00:00-04:00

This incredible aerial photograph was captured over Lower Manhattan and New York Harbor around 1906 by an unknown photographer. The tallest building in the world at the time, the Singer Building on Liberty Street and Broadway, is visible in the top-center but is difficult to make out clearly.

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Vintage Photograph Shows Thousands of Beachgoers on Packed Coney Island Beach in 1975

2022-09-04T12:00:00-04:00

The Lively Morgue was a daily photo blog from the New York Times in which an original photo from the newspaper's archives is reposted along with tidbits of information gleaned from the historical article it accompanied. Along with a rescan of the original photograph, the backs of each photo were also scanned, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the editorial process of one of the world's best newspapers.

This posting featured an aerial photograph of thousands of beachgoers, captured over Coney Island beach on a hot summer's day in August, 1975.

Aug. 3, 1975: Coney Island was one of the few areas of activity during that summer’s hottest days, as the “Coney Island Chamber of Commerce reported a crowd of more than 1 million people, including more than 5,000 who slept on the beaches overnight,” The Times reported. Elsewhere across the five boroughs, “New York City was a town in low gear,” as temperatures seemed to linger in the 90s without any respite in sight.

The original article from 1975 has more.

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[REPOST] Vintage Aerial Photograph Shows Battery Park and Financial District 100 Years Ago

2022-09-03T12:00:00-04:00

At the time, New York City had a population of 5.7 million - the population had doubled in just 30 years due to mass immigration. The city was developing rapidly, and more than a quarter of the 300 largest companies in the US were headquartered in NYC.

The city was a destination for internal migrants as well as immigrants. Through 1940, New York was a major destination for African Americans during the Great Migration from the rural American South. The Harlem Renaissance flourished during the 1920s and the era of Prohibition. New York's ever accelerating changes and rising crime and poverty rates were reduced after World War I disrupted trade routes, the Immigration Restriction Acts limited additional immigration after the war, and the Great Depression reduced the need for new labor. The combination ended the rule of the Gilded Age barons. As the city's demographics temporarily stabilized, labor unionization helped the working class gain new protections and middle-class affluence, the city's government and infrastructure underwent a dramatic overhaul under Fiorello La Guardia, and his controversial parks commissioner, Robert Moses, ended the blight of many tenement areas, expanded new parks, remade streets, and restricted and reorganized zoning controls.

For a while, New York ranked as the most populous city in the world, overtaking London in 1925, which had reigned for a century. The 'Roaring 20s' also saw a construction boom, and many of New York's icons including Chrysler Center, Rockefeller Center, and the Empire State Building would be constructed in the ensuing decade.

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Wednesday, June 15th, 2022, Good Afternoon!

2022-06-15T14:00:00-04:00

Good afternoon! Wishing you a happy Wednesday, June 15th, 2022 from all of us at Viewing NYC!

Here's what the weather looks like in the City right now.

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Tuesday, June 14th, 2022, Good Evening!

2022-06-14T18:00:00-04:00

Good evening! Wishing you a happy Tuesday, June 14th, 2022 from all of us at Viewing NYC!

Here's what the weather looks like in the City right now.

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Tuesday, June 14th, 2022, Good Afternoon!

2022-06-14T14:00:00-04:00

Good afternoon! Wishing you a happy Tuesday, June 14th, 2022 from all of us at Viewing NYC!

Here's what the weather looks like in the City right now.

The post Tuesday, June 14th, 2022, Good Afternoon! appeared first on Viewing NYC