Who would have thought that the NYC Dept of Records could be so cool and interesting? This links you to their website, where you can directly order photo prints from the City. For former and current NYCers, you may be interested in the tax photo section, which allows you to purchase shots taken of any and all buildings that existed in the 1930s and 1940s. This includes every building in the 5 boroughs, so I think I am going to order a print of our current apartment as a Christmas gift to my boyfriend (despite the apartment giving us quite a bit of grief, with leaky bathroom ceilings, cantankerous heating systems, and the more than occasional pest)! They also sell prints of famous landmarks and streets - the first picture you see is an aerial view of central park in the the winter of 1938. The second is a shot taken in 1931, on the corner of 44th and 10th Ave - I wish we still had billboards that looked like that! Then there's Times Square in 1938, then my absolute favorite - a 1937 shot of Grand Central Station, a station I pass through everyday to go to work: 
So pretty! Doesn't it inspire you to want to walk around and take black and white photos all day?
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