New York in the 1940s was a very different city than what we know today. But in some ways, the city’s neighborhoods and local characteristics have persisted over the past 70 years.

Bronx 1943 map
Welcome to 1940s New York provides a window into the city of our (relatively recent) past. It provides a helpful supplement to the individual 1940 Census records that are now available online, offering area-wide context for the person-by-person details now available from the Census Bureau and National Archives.

Neighborhood Profiles

Welcome to 1940s New York includes hundreds of photos, more than 100 color-coded maps, statistics, and a brief narrative for 116 “survey districts” or rough approximations of the neighborhoods we know today.

These profiles were published in 1943 by a consortium of four local newspapers – the New York Times, the News Syndicate Co. (now the Tribune Company, then the owner of the Daily News), the Daily Mirror, and Hearst Consolidated Publications (publisher of the New York Journal American). Their purpose was to “aid advertisers in getting from New York the vast volume of sales which only New York can give.” For us, seven decades later, the profiles offer a rare glimpse into the city from that era.