What life was like in New York City 100 years ago
New York City is the most populous city in the United States, coming in at more than double the population of the second-largest city, Los Angeles. With this size comes an outsize influx of tourism and larger-than-life fame that compels people to visit New York from all over the world, either for a quick visit or to relocate. From Frank Sinatra to Jay-Z, countless songs have been written about the city, and from “Annie Hall” to “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” dozens of famous movies have memorialized the Big Apple.
It comes as no surprise, then, that a city as rich in culture as New York City has changed significantly in the last century. From politics and sports to fashion and transportation, some elements of life are virtually unrecognizable from the way they were 100 years ago. Case in point: While policewomen in the New York City police force today dress in uniforms very similar to their male counterparts, their 1920s uniforms featured skirts and pillbox hats. And while the New York Yankees are today considered one of the most impressive teams in baseball, they had only recently moved to the city 100 years ago and had yet to win a World Series. Neighborhood demographics are drastically different, as is the layout—most notably due to Robert Moses’ influence throughout the 20th century.
New York politics is no stranger today to scandals in its political life (just Google the names Eliot Spitzer or Anthony Weiner), but politics in the early 20th century was a decidedly more corrupt affair, with political machines like Tammany Hall still holding outsize sway in the city, to say nothing of mob families and bosses…