Theater marquees, 1944.
 
When we think of a city we tend to think of it from its representation in films and TV—unless of course we’ve been there. Paris is the Eiffel Tower. London is Big Ben. Russia and it’s the onion domes of Saint Basil’s Cathedral or the red brick spires of the Kremlin. Rome the Colosseum. Los Angeles—Hollywood Blvd., freeways and Rodeo Drive. New York, well it’s Times Squares, the tenements and neon lit restaurants and of its bars as seen from countless detective shows and gritty urban movies. These beautiful color photos of the New York from the forties to the seventies are like backdrops to those feature films, or even better images that capture pages from a Kerouac novel that inspire dreams:

What’s Times Square doing there anyway? Might as well enjoy it. — Greatest city the world has ever seen. — Have they got a Times Square on Mars? What would the Blob do on Times Square? Or St. Francis?

 

Giant advert for Jane Russell in Howard Hughes’s production of ‘Underwater’.
 

Broadway 1955.
 

The RKO Palace and a Planter’s Peanuts advert 7th and Broadway.
 

Street scene outside McGinnis restaurant, Tango Palace and Cobbs, 1962.
 

Port Arthur restaurant 1962.
 

Broadway looking north from 50th, 1962.
 

Camel advert near Times Square, 1962.
 

RKO Palace 46th and 7th.
 

Bonds, Avenue of the Americas and Broadway, 1978.
 
Via Neat Stuff.