Plus ça change?
A selection of photographs from New York Changing: Revisiting Berenice Abbott's New York (Princeton, 2004) has been mounted on the Web, one that I suspect favors evidence of persistence. The number of scenes that have remained more or less the same since 1935 is remarkable. One of the 'now' photos, taken in 1998 from Henry Street and looking toward the Municipal and Woolworth Buildings, would (sadly) look more like Abbott's if shot today. (Thanks, Gothamist.)
I have a dim recollection of walking across the since-demolished skybridge, which connected what were then offices of the First National City Bank of New York - now Citibank - during my summer as a messenger boy for Empire Trust - long since swallowed up by the Bank of New York. Perhaps it's my imagination, or calcified wishful thinking. The bridge had to come down, I suppose, when the building to the left, 55 Wall, became a hotel under the Cipriani aegis. The building on the right, 35 Exchange Place, is one of New York's most exciting Deco buildings, with super gargoyles way up high.
