midtownmanhattan

This photo was taken on East 17th Street in New York City, in front of Union Square. Two of the buildings in the background are the Century Building a.k.a. 33 East 17th Street (currently a Barnes & Noble) and 200 Park Avenue South.

Also, based on this and several other New York Times articles, it seems that the photograph commemorates what was for some time an annual event: an "Orphans' Automobile Day" where all the orphans in the city would be driven via auto to Coney Island.

Hola, soy el administrador de un grupo llamado Antiguas y nos encantaría agregar esto al grupo.

Here's a photo of those buildings today. The one with the big arch has been replaced by the glass AT&T structure.

Interesting that they were hauling orphans to Luna Park only ten days after Dreamland burned: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2162672387/

Noticing the prices.

98 cent toasters look good

This is great. Such a contrast to the drugstores we have nowadays. I think I'm going to use this in my revised blog post Anxiety Beta Blocker to show the difference between yesteryear and today.

Based on the higher-res version of this image on the LOC website, these windows say something like "National Cloak & Suit." According to the NYT, the National Cloak and Suit Company occupied "the entire west side of the block on Seventh Avenue between Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Street" in New York City. A look at Google Maps' Street View confirms that it's this location, 250 Seventh Avenue, currently a Whole Foods store. There is also an October 10, 1912 story about city-wide fire drill exercises the previous day, one of which took place at the building, so this picture could have been taken on October 9, 1912, unless there other fire drills of this type taken in other years.

Thanks, epicharmus! We will add a note to the source data and reload the description.

Bain News Agency has placed the date on the bottom of the photo: 10/9/12. Here is another view of the fire drill, in the adjacent photo in Bain's photostream: