Before the telephone directory, there was the city directory, a book that listed the names, addresses, professions, and in some cases ethnicity, of people in a particular town or city. Many of these directories have been digitized for your perusal, or are available on microfilm, all at the New York Public Library.
In New York City, city directories were printed between 1786 and 1934: the first telephone books began to appear in the late
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