--- title: New York Before 9/11: Vintage Photos of Lower Manhattan description: Classic photos of Lower Manhattan -- where New York was born -- from the decades before the Twin Towers anchored the island. canonical: https://time.com/3486183/lower-manhattan-where-new-york-was-born/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-08-10T15:43:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-14T03:23:24.000Z og:title: New York Before 9/11: Vintage Photos of Lower Manhattan og:description: Classic photos of Lower Manhattan — where New York was born — from the decades before the Twin Towers anchored the island og:url: https://time.com/3486183/lower-manhattan-where-new-york-was-born/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt49aa71677a63fdb5/69875fb6e20a873f31a82582/lower-manhattan-new-york-26.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: lower-manhattan-new-york-26 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: New York Before 9/11: Vintage Photos of Lower Manhattan twitter:description: Classic photos of Lower Manhattan — where New York was born — from the decades before the Twin Towers anchored the island twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt49aa71677a63fdb5/69875fb6e20a873f31a82582/lower-manhattan-new-york-26.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Lower Manhattan: Where New York Was Born ## Video: Lower Manhattan: Before the Twin Towers [Watch (HLS stream): Lower Manhattan: Before the Twin Towers](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/f0MLXRWK.m3u8) (1:21)  _Published 2014-09-10. Black and white LIFE photos depict lower manhattan before the World Trade Center was constructed_ by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Updated: Dec 14, 2023 3:23 AM UTCPublished: Aug 10, 2013 3:43 PM UTC  Aerial view from lower West Side with new World Trade Center's Twin Towers (fore) against background of Manhattan. Aerial view from lower West Side with new World Trade Center's Twin Towers (fore) against background of Manhattan.Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Updated: Dec 14, 2023 3:23 AM UTCPublished: Aug 10, 2013 3:43 PM UTC What can anyone say about New York City that has not already been expressed by Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, Lorca, Whitman, Lou Reed, Langston Hughes, Martin Scorsese, Patti Smith, Kurtis Blow and a thousand other writers, musicians, filmmakers, painters and, yes, photographers? Like London, Paris, Rome and a handful of other great cities, Gotham seems to consciously challenge artists of every stripe to somehow convey even a sliver of the ceaseless, panoramic multiverse it contains—while confronting the poet, painter, filmmaker and photographer with a living tableau that, by its nature, defies definition. And still . . . every day, in every medium, men and women address the world of New York, hoping to somehow witness and share something of its great spirit. Does the New York that Whitman celebrated in _Leaves of Grass_ (“The beautiful city, the city of hurried and sparkling waters! the city of spires and masts!. . . my city!”) bear any resemblance to the melancholic landscape Lou Reed evoked in “Perfect Day” or the intoxicating dystopia Scorsese and Schrader brought to life in _Taxi Driver_? Of course it does—in that these and countless other visions of New York have forged the complex, contradictory idea of the city that most of us carry around in our minds and our hearts. [\[See a LightBox feature on Mohawk ironworkers rebuilding the New York skyline\]](http://lightbox.time.com/2012/09/11/the-mohawk-ironworkers-rebuilding-the-iconic-skyline-of-new-york/#1)  Aerial view from lower West Side with new World Trade Center's Twin Towers (fore) against background of Manhattan. Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images For those of us who were in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and for billions more who watched 9/11 unfold on TV and online, that 20th-century idea—of what the city meant to New Yorkers and to the rest of the world—will likely never hold sway again. It has been changed, changed utterly. Moreover, for some who witnessed the 2001 attacks on New York—and on the Pentagon and the plane that went down in Pennsylvania—the scale of the carnage in Lower Manhattan transformed the entire city, in an instant, from a place they called home to a ruin they had to leave behind forever. For countless others, the love we always had for New York only grew stronger after seeing it so savagely attacked. Our connection to the city, and to other New Yorkers, now had about it a sense of defiance coupled with a kind of rough tenderness: the metropolis that had always felt so huge and indomitable suddenly seemed painfully vulnerable and in need of protection. _Our_ protection. Here, LIFE.com pays tribute to New York—specifically, to the storied landscape of Lower Manhattan, where 400 years ago New York was born—in photographs made in the decades before the Twin Towers anchored the foot of the island. Wall Street, Battery Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, Trinity Church, the Statue of Liberty and the vast, shimmering harbor—they’re all here: landmarks that, despite everything, retain their place in the collective imagination, captured by some of the finest photographers of the 20th century. **WATCH an audio slideshow of this LIFE.com gallery:**  A German zeppelin appears to float above the Woolworth Building in 1928. Herbert Orth—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  The Brooklyn Bridge and the Lower Manhattan skyline seen from the East River, 1937. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  The Downtown Skyport with two amphibious planes readying for take-off, 1937. Margaret Bourke White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  An aerial view, from the south, of Lower Manhattan, Governor's Island, the harbor, the Hudson and East Rivers and New York City's surroundings, 1939. Margaret Bourke White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  The Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline, 1939. Margaret Bourke White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Aerial view of the Lower West Side of Manhattan, Battery Park and the waterfront, 1939. Margaret Bourke White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  The New York Aquarium in Battery Park, 1939\. The aquarium currently resides in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Margaret Bourke White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  The old Fulton Fish Market, then the biggest in the world, seen through the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, 1941. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  View of the Lower Manhattan skyline as seen from the roof of the Hotel Bossert ("the Waldorf-Astoria of Brooklyn") on Montague Street in Brooklyn, 1943. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Pedestrians walk down Nassau Street past the Federal Reserve Building, 1944\. The New York Stock Exchange can be glimpsed at the foot of the image. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Tangled streamers and confetti thrown by people celebrating the end of the war in Europe litter headstones and the grounds of Trinity Church's venerable cemetery at the foot of Wall Street, 1945. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Celebrating the end of the Second World War in Europe, Lower Manhattan, 1945. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Birds-eye view of Lower Manhattan looking southeast towards Battery Park with Ellis Island beyond and the New Jersey waterfront in the distance, 1945. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  An aerial view of Battery Park and out across the sunlit waters of New York Harbor, 1946. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Lower Manhattan as seen from across the Hudson River, 1946. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Lower Manhattan and beyond as seen from the rooftop of a building on Staten Island, 1946. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Freighters in the East River, 1946. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  The Brooklyn Bridge and, beyond, the skyline of Lower Manhattan, 1948. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  The Brooklyn Bridge arches toward Lower Manhattan, 1948. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Men unload coffee at a Brooklyn dock with Lower Manhattan visible in the background, 1949. Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Lower Manhattan in the fog, 1950. Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Trinity Church, Lower Manhattan, 1962. Leonard McCombe—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Aerial view of Manhattan with the new, nearly completed World Trade Center's Twin Towers dominating the southern rim of the island, 1971. Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Aboard the Staten Island Ferry with the Twin Towers rising in the background, 1971. Nina Leen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Alfred Eisenstaedt's 1983 portrait of the Twin Towers, taken from across the East River and beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  World Trade Center's Twin Towers seen from the harbor at night, 1973. Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3486183/lower-manhattan-where-new-york-was-born/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3486183/lower-manhattan-where-new-york-was-born/"},"headline":"Lower Manhattan: Where New York Was Born","datePublished":"2013-08-10T15:43:56.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-14T03:23:24.000Z","description":"Classic photos of Lower Manhattan -- where New York was born -- from the decades before the Twin Towers anchored the island.","url":"https://time.com/3486183/lower-manhattan-where-new-york-was-born/","keywords":["New York City","photography","9/11","wall street","World trade center","september 11","manhattan","Ben Cosgrove","Liz Ronk","statue of liberty"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt49aa71677a63fdb5/69875fb6e20a873f31a82582/lower-manhattan-new-york-26.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ben Cosgrove","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt49aa71677a63fdb5/69875fb6e20a873f31a82582/lower-manhattan-new-york-26.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"lower-manhattan-new-york-26","caption":"Aerial view from lower West Side with new World Trade Center's Twin Towers (fore) against background of Manhattan.","creditText":"Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3486183/lower-manhattan-where-new-york-was-born/","name":"Lower Manhattan: Where New York Was Born"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Lower Manhattan: Before the Twin Towers","description":"Black and white LIFE photos depict lower manhattan before the World Trade Center was constructed","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/f0MLXRWK/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-09-10T23:11:43.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/f0MLXRWK.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3486183/lower-manhattan-where-new-york-was-born/","duration":"PT1M21S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3486183/lower-manhattan-where-new-york-was-born/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```