This fantastic video from The New Yorker combines old footage of New York City taken over the past 80 years and combines it with the modern day counterpart, side by side on a split screen. Most of the footage was captured by vehicle, so you can dynamically compare both eras with ease. In its nearly 9-minutes, the video travels all around Manhattan, as well as parts of Brooklyn and Queens, and most of the Lower Manhattan bridges as well.

A split-screen tour of the same streets in New York City, from the nineteen-thirties and today.

New York City is often called "Gotham." Many people assume this is in reference to the hometown of the fictional superhero Batman, called "Gotham City." In fact, calling New York "Gotham" dates back to the famous author Washington Irving, who helper author a satirical periodical called Salmagundi, published in 1807 and 08.

Video artist Nelson Sullivan went everywhere and filmed just about everything downtown in the 1980s. In this video from the 5 Ninth Avenue Project — the NYU-run YouTube channel that is digitizing and releasing the vast archives of Sullivan's video — watch as the artist documents one of the first Gay Pride festivals in the City in 1983.

Nelson Sullivan had only recently acquired a VHS camera with a portable recorder when he videotaped New York's 1983 Gay Pride Celebration. Video by Nelson Suillivan