New York is the most populous city in the United States and is the largest financial and cultural center of this country. From a small town in Manhattan, New York became the world famous ‘sleepless city’. Here are photos from 1889-1999 that show the amazing transformation of New York.
The photo was taken in 1889. The residence of lawyer Elliot Fitch Shepard (the nearest building) and his wife, Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard, daughter of William H. Vanderbilt, at 2 West 52nd Street. The ornate house of Shepard’s brother-in-law, William K. Vanderbilt, lay beside it. In the distance is St. Church. Thomas Episcopal and Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue. 
The photo was taken in 1899. Two women walk beside a row of wagons near Madison Square. 
A woman overlooks the Statue of Liberty from the deck of a ferry in the early 1900s. The statue was made and given to America by France in honor of America’s 100 years of independence. 
1901. Children play skiing in Central Park. The park’s long and narrow design is the result of a 1858 competition with victories for Connecticut-born landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and British-American architect Calvert Vaux. 
1911. Times Square in neon lights, taken more than a century ago. 
1915. A group of women led the Manhattan Delegation in the Election Party for Women parade, a New York City-based political organization. 
1921. Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Leach (right) watched two men pour alcohol down a sewer, after a raid enforced a ban on the production and sale of alcohol. Congress passed the 18th Amendment in 1920, banning the production and sale of alcohol, opening up a 13-year period of alcohol ban. This ended with the adoption of the 21st Amendment in 1933, which repealed the 18th Amendment. 
1923. Young girls dancing Charleston in Harlem, a residential neighborhood in New York City. Although the dance existed before the 1920s, it gained popularity after appearing on the Broadway show Running Wild in 1923. 
1925. A corner of New York’s East Side in the mid-20s. If you look closely, you will see shops selling diamonds, fur and suitcases, as well as an advertisement for a loan office in the photo. . 
1930. Unemployed men line up waiting for bread and necessities during the Great Depression. In 1932, 1 in 3 New Yorkers was unemployed, and about 1.6 million people lived on government subsidies. 
1938. Aerial view of the crowd welcoming New Year’s Eve in Times Square. People in America started to welcome the new year in Times Square since 1904. 
1940. A group of people look out from above the Empire State Building. It was the tallest building in the world until the 1970s, when the World Trade Center won this position. 
1947. A child waved an American flag from the crown of the Statue of Liberty. The crown’s 25 windows overlook the surrounding New York Harbor. 
1953. Pedestrians weave through the busy traffic of New York City. 
1958. Two models wearing fur coats, velvet berets and waist-length skirts walked across the Tudor City Bridge during a photo shoot for Vogue magazine. 
1961. Three walkers holding umbrellas fight snow and wind as they cross the intersection at 148 Street in Harlem. Blizzard occurred in February 1961 with some areas recorded snow as thick as 50cm. 
1966. A helicopter landed on top of the Pan-Am building (now the MetLife building), designed by the German architect and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. 
1967. Business premises at the corner of 7th Avenue and 42nd Street in Times Square. 
People on the subway in 1976, along with the famous Lark cigarette commercial. 
New Yorkers crowded on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1978 after a serious power failure caused the subway system to stop working. 
Pedestrians walk past the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. The 1980s was a decade marked by wealth, especially in New York City, a trend that existed until the 1987 stock market crash. 
1999. A crowd of 30,000 people ran across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge on Staten Island during the New York City Marathon. Today, it is the largest marathon in the world, with 53,627 participants in 2019./.
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