Pre-70's New York Photos

February 8, 2017 3:35 PM

So I'm looking for some photos to use as my Chromecast background and thought some old time New York photos might be neat-- anything before the 70's, the more the better! The trouble is, I'd like to be able to download them all in bulk-- or at least fairly quickly-- and I don't know the first place to look for that sort of thing! Archive.org might be an option, thoughts??
posted by dr handsome to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

New York Public Library Online?
posted by Michele in California at 4:10 PM on February 8, 2017

Not sure if you can download them in bulk but there's an amazing collection on the nyc municipal archives website:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/gallery/home.shtml
posted by tabula rasa at 4:40 PM on February 8, 2017

Oh boy , do I heart the facebook page Al Ponte's Time Machine for this. Won't help you with the bulk aspect of the request but it's really worth following.
posted by voiceofreason at 5:21 PM on February 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

These images aren't public domain, but should be fine for personal use (and are really amazing) - no way to bulk upload, though.
posted by Mchelly at 8:25 PM on February 8, 2017

Another really great Facebook page (or at least used to be, so check the old posts there. It's gone downhill as it got more popular) is Manhattan Before 1990.
posted by old_growler at 10:10 PM on February 8, 2017

NARA (the National Archives and Records Administration) has put a lot of their PD content on Wikimedia Commons. So if you wanted to use a tool like DownThemAll you could grab every picture from this page. They're not all exactly up your alley (some are portraits) but many are.
posted by jessamyn at 6:39 AM on February 9, 2017

There's also an Old New York Tumblt that features lots of pre-1980 photos.
posted by the sobsister at 10:20 AM on February 9, 2017