The New York City Municipal Archives - Online Gallery

The New York City Department of Records officially announced the availability of their photo database today. The link to these images is here.

UPDATE: The website is up and running as of 3rd May 20121...

Collected from the Municipal Archives collection of more than 2.2 million images going back to the mid-1800s, the photographs feature all manner of city oversight — from stately ports and bridges to grisly gangland killings.

After four years preparation, the department's mission to make city records accessible to everyone is beginning to take shape but the future development is restricted by lack of funding.

The photographs were taken predominantly by municipal workers, most were only accessible by directly visiting the archive offices in lower Manhattan.

You can search the images, share them through social media, or purchase them as prints. Personally, I would suggest buying some prints in order to help fund the availability and future development of this amazing collection.

The collection has photographs from the largest collection of criminal justice evidence in the English-speaking world, holding some incredible glass-plate photographs taken by the New York City Police Department. Naturally, some of these pictures could be construed as 'grisly' in nature.

As an example, there are over 800,000 35mm colour photographs of EVERY city building. These were taken in the mid-1980s to update city records, and the portfolio includes more than 1,300 rare images taken by local photographers of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration.

Due primarily to financial constraints, the digitized gallery does not include the huge collection (over 700,000 photographs) of every city building from 1939 to 1941. However, the online collection is growing as funds allow.

IF you want to visit the collection (more information here), the Department of Records and Information Services is located in the Surrogate's Court Building at 31 Chambers Street in the Civic Center area of lower Manhattan. The building is located on the northwest corner of Centre and Chambers Streets. All visitors to 31 Chambers Street must present a photo ID and pass through security magnetometers.