Brooklyn photographer Samuel Gottscho is well known for his New York City photography in the 1930's. We have featured his photos on Viewing NYC a few times before, and now we have this gem to share with you as well.

The Empire State Building has one of the most iconic observation decks in the world. Celebrated by locals, tourists, movies and television shows alike, the view from the deck is one of the best sights in all of New York. This shot was captured by Gottscho on it's opening day, May 1st, 1931, and shows a much different view of lower Manhattan than the one we enjoy today.

New York City is a city rich with immigrant population, and it has been this way for a very long time. In these vintage maps from 1894 recently relocated by Slate , you can see just how dense the immigrant population was in New York City, showing the distribution of the principal nationalities by sanitary districts.

These two maps don’t represent the total diversity in any given sanitation district. They only show the largest two or three groups that made up two-thirds of each district’s population. The decision ultimately dramatized the strong presence of foreign-born citizens from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Russia throughout Manhattan. Pierce told Harpers’ Weekly at the time that Scotch, English, Welsh, Scandinavian, and Canadian New Yorkers were not recorded due to “being in small numbers and perhaps less foreign than the others.”

You could grab a hot meal from a wall, ride a train above Manhattan, and lose hours flipping through records in Times Square — all before lunch. That New York? It's gone. In this video, we explore 12 forgotten pieces of NYC you’ll never see again. From the neon chaos of St. Marks to the silence of a newspaper strike, these moments didn’t just vanish — they were ripped from the city’s soul.