What did the greatest city in the world look like 100 years ago?
You can now see for yourself in a glorious 8-minute video. Yestervid, a film company that specializes in producing historical videos, set out to explore NYC as it looked a century ago. The result is a montage of the oldest known footage of New York.
Reaching as far back as 1896, the dramatic video shows grainy black-and-white images of various neighborhoods and landmarks throughout the city — from breathtaking views of the tower on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1899, to a subway train chugging through Union Square in 1905, to a cop in a bobby cap twirling his billy club through the Lower East Side in 1903.
The video includes present-day Google maps and historical tidbits to give viewers a better understanding of just how dramatically New York City has changed over the past century.
One thing is certain: She looked dazzling in black and white.