A friend who lives nearby sent along this lovely photo of Metropolitan Avenue at Graham—our closest subway stop (Graham Avenue on the L line). It was taken in the summer of 1937 by Berenice Abbott (available from the New York Public Library digital archives here).

Curious, I went out and snapped my own, from the same spot:

The differences and similarities are equally striking! 72 years did quite a number, but to my eyes it appears that not a single building has been razed. Altered considerably, sure, but the structures still stand—people still pass them everyday, climb their stairs, and call them home.

The intersection was unquestionably more beautiful in 1937. I don’t think I need to tell anyone here how unspeakably tacky vinyl siding is (Unless—landlords? Y’all listening?) compared to the facades of the thirties: the Victorian cupola on top of the corner building anchoring the intersecting avenues, with rounded pediments on either side giving balance and proportion. The ornate cornices along the tops of all the buildings have been lopped off, leaving them no better crown than a fence. Where the windows have not been bricked (or sided) over, they’ve lost all the framing that made them make sense in the larger structure—eaves, ledges, sills, gone. The wide friezes separating the storefronts on the ground floor from the residences above have given way to bulbous prefabricated awnings and roll-down metal gates. Charming.

Interestingly, the cast-iron subway entrance hasn’t changed one bit. Evoking Industrial-Age New York (Ms. Abbott captured her photo the same decade the Empire State Building went up), the chunky balustrade around the stairs is supported by thick, tightly spaced posts (I wonder if they were forest green back then?) and lanterns signal the entrance.

There was a beer ad (and Coca-Cola too, of course) spanning the south face of the corner building in ’37, so I can’t rail at that in the modern world. But look at that poor lamppost littered with paper scraps and tape gunk from flyers and solicitations—in the age of Craigslist, no less! The streetcar tracks laid into the cobblestone have presumably had black asphalt poured over them. One thing we do have, mercifully, on the streets these days, that was missing back then: trees.