New York City Views at The New York Public Library

The New York Public Library has long been known for its holdings of photographs of New York City. The Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy maintains an important file of archival photographs of the city dating from the 1870s to 1980. The bulk of the collection comprises photographs from the late 1920s through the 1940s, a period during which the Library commissioned Percy Loomis Sperr, a Staten Island photographer, to document changes in the city through a series of nearly 30,000 photographs. The Photography Collection has complementary holdings, including important collections of work by Lewis Wickes Hine and Berenice Abbott. Historically, the collection has been stronger in New York photographs from the first half of the century, particularly work associated with documentary and social movements, such as photographs made for the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project or by members of the New York Photo League (1936–51).

In 2000, the Library decided to strengthen its collections of New York photographs from the second half of the 20th century. An initial gift by Mrs. Edwin A. Malloy allowed the purchase of a project by the artist Dylan Stone, who documented New York City below Canal Street, block by block and building by building, in a series of 26,000 snapshot photographs. A second gift, in 2003, from the estate of Leroy A. Moses has provided funds for the acquisition of additional New York photographs that supplement or fill in gaps in the collection from 1950 to the present day. The current exhibition is the first in a planned series that will showcase these new acquisitions, sometimes in conjunction with other photographs from the collection to provide a broader historical context.

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