What’s sweeter than a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge under bright blue Kodachrome skies? That bridge and those skies on top of a large stack of even more vintage New York City shots from the early 1940s, when the boys all wore suits and hats and a hot potato cart was just around the Clinton Street corner. Before the irreplaceable Kodachrome film processing went extinct, amateur photographer Charles Weever Cushman donated his collection of 14,500 color slides to Indiana University. The images were shot all around the world between 1938 to 1969, but these captures of early 1940s Manhattan — spotted by How to Be a Retronaut — are just incredible. See McSorley’s Old Ale House looking nearly as it does now, olde timey sailors sauntering about on Fleet Week and other nostalgia-inducing scenes in our gallery.
Charles Weever Cushman. Looking up into the Financial District from South Ferry. Courtesy Indiana University
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