20 Historic Photos of Depression-Era New York City

There are no shortage of places and ways to virtually travel back in time and see what New York City looked like in bygone eras, and recently, a glut of Great Depression-era photos were made easily discoverable, thanks to Yale University. The photos were part of the government's efforts to promote the Farm Security Administration, which was meant to help impoverished rural communities, and the government commissioned photographers like Arthur Rothstein and Walker Evans to shoot across America. Eventually, the photos themselves eclipsed the FSA itself in terms of notoriety: Some of the most famous images of the 20th century, including Dorothea Lange's photo of a migrant mother with her children, were commissioned as part of the program.

Now, thanks to a collaboration between Yale University and the Library of Congress, hundreds of thousands of these photos are easily searchable online via Photogrammar—and, of course, there are plenty of phenomenal New York City images to check out, including ones by Gordon Parks and Russell Lee. They present a gorgeous, fascinating time capsule of NYC in the period between 1935 and 1946, showing landmarks like Penn Station and Times Square, along with quotidian street scenes. Take a look at some of our favorites below, or peek around on Photogrammar's website yourself.

· Photogrammar [Yale University]
· Check out These Compelling Depression-Era Photos of the Lower East Side and Little Italy [PHOTOS] [Bowery Boogie]