Cities & Buildings
Architecture, cityscape, infrastructure, monuments, town life

Cigarette Cards: ABCs
Hundreds of series published from before 1900 to the mid-20th century, totaling tens of thousands of individual cards (viewable front and back). Arranged by letter of the alphabet, they cover an encyclopedic range of subjects, including film stars, sports, and military topics, plants, animals, and monuments of the world.
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history |
printing |
science

Civil War Medical Care: Photographs from the United States Sanitary Commission Collection, 1861-1872
Over 200 photographs and drawings relating to the work, facilities and Civil War locales associated with the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC); forms Series XXXIII of the United States Sanitary Commission Records, 1861-1872.
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history

"Classic 6:" New York City Apartment Building Living, 1880s-1910s
More than 1,300 digital images depict elevation views and floor plans for middle and upper class apartment buildings from New York City's pre-World War I residential building boom.
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culture

Detroit Publishing Company Postcards from the Leonard Lauder Postcard Collection
Thousands of postcards (photomechanical prints, primarily in color and on warm white stock, ca. 1898-1920s, featuring views of well-known streets, buildings, historic monuments, natural scenery, industry, transportation, and daily life.
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printing

"Drugstore Photographs, Or, A Trip Along the Yangtze River, 1999;" Lower Manhattan Block-by-Block by Dylan Stone
26,000 color snapshot photographs taken in 1999, recording the streetscape, block by block, of Manhattan south of Canal Street, and arranged in an archive by neighborhood and block.
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cities

Early Real Estate Atlases of New York
Over 2,000 maps of New York City, including Manhattan and Brooklyn "fire insurance maps" from the 1850s-1860, showing streets, blocks, tax lots, natural and manmade features, buildings, neighborhoods, and more.
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history

Metropolis: New York City Water and Transit Infrastructure in Photographs
Over 600 images, primarily original photographs, on the themes of traffic, transit and water. Includes mass transit proposals and projects, dating from 1867; the Catskill Aqueduct system that still supplies the city's water; and the pioneering Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River.
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industry

The Middle East in Early Prints and Photographs
Several thousand prints and photographs contained in works from the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century. These include books illustrated with prints or photographs, photograph albums, and archival compilations; the processes represented range from engravings to lithographs, and from salt prints to heliogravures.
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Nature Illustrated: Flowers, Plants, and Trees, 1550-1900
Thousands of art and scientific prints, illustrating medicinal plants, spectacular garden flowers, exotic tropical blooms, trees and ferns. Includes many different printmaking techniques, from woodcuts to stipple engravings to color-printed lithographs.
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science

Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s
More than 54,000 New York City archival photographs (and their captioned versos) from the 1870s-1970s arranged by borough and street; the majority are exterior building views and neighborhood scenes from the 1910s-1940s.
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history

The Picture Collection of The New York Public Library
Over 30,000 images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, created mostly before 1923 and selected from the over 1,000,000 images in the Mid-Manhattan Library's Picture Collection.
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Picturing America, 1497-1899: Prints, Maps, and Drawings bearing on the New World Discoveries and on the Development of the Territory that is now the United States
Over 1,000 original prints, drawings, and maps, featuring views of American towns and cities, representations of historical events, scenes, places, and battles.
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history

Presenting The New York Public Library: Drawings, Photographs and Prints
Over 2,000 images of buildings, collections, and programs, including NYPL predecessor the New York Free Circulating Library. Includes views of the Astor and Lenox Library, Branch Libraries in the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, and the construction of the Library's landmark Central Building.
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culture

Russia and Eastern Europe in Rare Photographs, 1860- 1945
Thousands of original Russian and East European photographs from the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, in more than 150 albums.
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history

United States in Stereo: In the Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views
Stereoscopic views, or stereographs, were as varied and popular in the 19th century as television continues to be in our time. This presentation will eventually include all the United States stereoscopic views in the Dennis Collection (more than 40,000 items), front and back, organized by State or Subject Series.
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history

Wonders: Images of the Ancient World
Over 1,700 images of the civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and other ancient Mediterranean cultures as conceived and depicted by artists and travelers from the 18th to the early 20th century, as represented in book and periodical illustrations, engravings, lithographs and photographs. A wide range of subjects includes arms and armor, architecture, furniture, pottery, mythology, religion, theater and the Seven Wonders of the World.
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history
NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the vast collections of The New York Public Library, including drawings, illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.